Hydraulic System Design of a Tri-Adjustable Automated Heavy Duty Handling System Based on Industry 4.0

Material handling is one of the most essential aspects within manufacturing processes/industries. Transportation equipment used in these industries varies from pallet jack to forklift trucks and/or cranes. Material handling equipment are mechanical equipment used for the movement, storage, control and protection of materials, goods and products throughout the process of manufacturing, distribution, consumption and disposal. The influence of global economy has necessitated changes in the conventional approaches for manufacturing companies. In this case, manufacturing companies in South Africa and globally have taken into their consideration several essential characteristics such as real-time reaction to changes, quick and quality response in sustaining and satisfying customer requests and/or needs, in both hardware equipment and software modules by which the production processes are optimized for next generation manufacturing systems. This paper aims at designing an Automated Heavy-Duty Material Handling System based on Industry 4.0 principles. The system compoents are designed and tested through calculations. The results show that the overall tractive effort of the system when it is fully loaded with 20 tons is 250.623 kN per wheel. Each wheel motor torque is and the system will need 468.411W of power per wheel in order to move the machine when loaded with its overall weight.