벨트클러치 전동방식의 농업용 소형 스키드 스티어 로더

Small Agricultural Skid-steer Loader Using Belt Clutch Power Transmission

Since the skid-steer loader is able to work for excavating, lifting and transporting load even at the narrow space, they are widely used in the regular farm and the livestock farm. The skid-steer loader normally adopts the hydrostatic transmission because the power to move the machine backward and forward should be delivered independently on both sides of wheels. Contrast to the mechanical system such as chain and belt transmissions, however, the hydrostatic transmission is less efficient in the use of energy and more difficult in the maintenance. This study was intended to investigate the feasibility of using triangular-type belt clutch and V-belt transmission for the newly developed skid-steer loader in order to overcome the problems stated in the hydrostatic transmission. In the developed triangular-type belt clutch, the centers of driving, driven and idler sheaves are arranged in the triangular shape in a plane, and V-belts were loaded loosely on three sheaves. The power is transmitted by pressing the idler connected to a lever on the loosened V-belt. Contrast to the normal belt clutch using two sheaves, the newly developed belt clutch has the characteristics of small contact-angle of the driving sheave at no bucket load and increasing contact-angle at the time of power transmission. The results of research can be summarized as follows: 1) The developed triangular-type belt clutch adopted a spring-loaded slackside idler which could transmit more power than a fixed idler could by sacrificing the belt life. The life of V-belt used in the power transmission reached at 500 hours(6 months) when the engine power of 11.8 ㎾ was transmitted. Also, it was feasible to develop the large industrial skid-loader with the V-belt transmission by using the proper set of sheaves. 2) The developed skid-steer loader changed the rotating radius and speed with bucket loads as the conventional skid steer loader did. The rotating speed was 47 deg/s at the maximum bucket load of 2.74 kN when the minimum rotating radius was 1.5m. 3) The power required in turning at the bucket load of 2.74 kN was 4 ㎾ and the slippage of V-belt was less than 1%.