The consideration of the drivetrains behavior under real operating conditions is becoming increasingly important. While in the past decades it was good enough to have a rough knowledge about the operation conditions in field, a more accurate and detailed picture of the duty cycles is required today. Caused by specific and complex operation conditions the load deviation between different applications is significant. In many cases like e.g. lifetime calculation, a precise knowledge of field conditions leads to the more accurate calculated or simulated results. This paper covers the duty cycles investigation of a forwarder application in field including the measurement concept and implementation. Especially, the analysis of the load conditions, clustering algorithm and lifetime calculation is included. The load spectrum generation is consequently done based on comprehensive load cycle determination. The Aim of this work is to verify the calculation accuracy of the load spectrum by using the clustered and raw data. The outcome of the investigation gives an indicator for the load degree of the drivetrain. Here the developed method creates a new and fast possibility of data analysis and is applicable to most drivetrain applications. Furthermore, the collected data is used as reference for future investigation of the forwarder evolution.
Science Journal 