Development of a Design Support Program for Pivot Points of Working Devices in Construction Equipment using Planar Multi-body Dynamic Analysis

For designing working devices of construction equipment, it is necessary to consider not only sufficient working ability but also available working range. Therefore, it is important to select the appropriate pivot positions of links. This paper presents a study on selection of pivot points of links used in construction equipment. To analyze the effect of each pivot point, a design program for pivot selection is developed. A conventional pivot design method requires a complicated process because it needs to create a certain working position manually to evaluate its performance. However, the developed program includes an automatic link assembly algorithm; thus, the working device can easily be analyzed by using pivot information of links. The developed program also included a kinematic/static analysis module and characteristic analysis algorithms. Therefore, it is possible to easily analyze a working device model created through the automatic assembly algorithm, whereby users can easily analyze the effect of each link pivot point for the actual product design.