Abstract
In this paper, vibration sources of an electric forklift are identified and the forklift vibrations are reduced by structural modification. For vibration identification, vibration signals are measured by an accelerometer when the forklift is moving. These signals are presented in a waterfall plot in order to find the dependency of frequency components on the forklift speed. It is found that main vibration source is tire pattern excitation. From some experiments and finite element analyses, it is also found that resonances occur because the natural frequencies of the forklift exist in usual driving speed range. To shift the natural frequencies outside the driving speed range, the connection parts between main body and loader are modified to increase stiffness. It is verified that considerable amount of vibration are reduced by the structural modification.
