The prominent feature of non highway wide body dump trucks is their 'wide body'. Because the width exceeds the national standard of 2.5m, it cannot be driven normally on highways. Its main purpose is a heavy-duty dump truck used in open-pit mines to complete the tasks of rock earthwork stripping and ore transportation. Its working characteristics are short transportation distance, heavy bearing capacity, and commonly used for loading with large electric shovels or hydraulic shovels, traveling back and forth between mining and unloading points.

Background of the emergence of off-road wide body dump trucks

The initial demand came from the large-scale development of mining. From the mining area to the coal platform, roads often spiral upwards, and lengthening the vehicle body will weaken the vehicle's ability to pass through curves; Increasing the height of the vehicle body will raise the center of gravity of the product, leading to driving hazards; Therefore, lengthening the width of the vehicle body becomes the most effective method. As the width of this type of vehicle increases, the bottom area expands, and its stacking capacity also increases. Therefore, enterprises are generally referred to as mining wide body dump trucks or wide body mining dump trucks. They are between large mining dump trucks and ordinary dump trucks, unlike large mining dump trucks, which are priced in the millions or even tens of millions, and unlike ordinary dump trucks, which have poor stability when operating in mining areas.

Some mining areas use imported large tonnage mining vehicles, which increases the operating costs of mining and reduces profit margins. And the wide body dump truck has become a vehicle with lower prices, strong carrying capacity, and can adapt to mining operations; Its emergence is an inevitable result of fierce competition among non road transportation vehicles, meeting differentiated needs, and segmented markets.

Structural characteristics of non highway wide body dump trucks

The wide body dump truck is similar in structure to ordinary engineering dump trucks, but while continuing and inheriting the advantages of ordinary engineering dump trucks, it has also been optimized, improved, and strengthened in specific structural details, making its performance more suitable for the actual situation of the mining area.

1. Power characteristics

At present, the load capacity of these vehicles is mostly between 30 to 70 tons, and they are still developing towards large-scale development. Due to its large deadweight tonnage and steep roads, the engine must have high power and torque to ensure effortless and powerful uphill operation under full load. Therefore, this type of vehicle is equipped with engines with high "specific torque" and high "torque increase coefficient". However, due to poor off-road conditions, the commonly used speed of this type of vehicle is around 30-40km/h. At present, in the field of wide body dump trucks, engines from brands such as Yuchai and Weichai account for a relatively high proportion. Of course, with the development of recent years, there are also new energy vehicle models. Taking Tongli Heavy Industry as an example, there are three types of new energy product lines: pure electric, extended range, and hybrid.

2. Frame characteristics

In order to maintain the center of gravity of the wide body dump truck at a lower height, the wide body dump truck often adopts a design structure without a subframe (i.e. integrated main and auxiliary beams), which is not only conducive to the overall layout of the vehicle, but also reduces the total mass of the vehicle. In addition, some companies adopt a welded box girder integrated frame solution for the frame structure of their wide body dump trucks, which has stronger load-bearing capacity and better impact resistance.

3. Axle characteristics

The axle, especially the drive axle, is the most stressed and tested part of a wide body dump truck. At present, the commonly used in the market is a two-stage wheel drive axle with a rear axle speed ratio of around 12, which has strong climbing ability, making its deceleration and torque increase effect more obvious and more suitable for low-speed driving on mining slopes.

4. Suspension characteristics

Most wide body mining dump trucks use hydraulic and pneumatic suspension, especially for models with a load capacity of over 45 tons. This model with short wheelbase and large mass is most suitable for installing hydro pneumatic suspension, which has no corresponding space to install traditional leaf spring shock absorption. The oil Gas Spring cylinder of the front wheel also has the function of steering kingpin, and the outer cylinder barrel is fastened on the outside of the longitudinal beam of the frame, so the traditional integral front axle is omitted.

5. Steering characteristics

Due to the large mass of the vehicle and the high load on the front axle, the steering of the front wheels relies entirely on hydraulic power. To ensure safe and reliable steering, this type of vehicle not only adopts full hydraulic steering, but also is equipped with an emergency steering system. In the event of a power failure in the steering system, the emergency steering system can ensure that it still has a certain degree of steering ability, allowing the vehicle to park in a relatively safe place.

6. Tire characteristics

The road conditions in the mining area are very harsh, especially in rainy and snowy weather where dust can make the road slippery and muddy. Ordinary dump tire patterns are difficult to handle on slopes. Most wide body dump trucks use 28 levels of engineering specific transverse large patterns and large cross-section engineering tires, which have strong grip performance, increased ground clearance, and improved trafficability.

Development Trends

Mining is a high energy consuming industry and also a high return industry. It is precisely because of this that traditional mining engineering machinery products only focus on product performance and neglect the energy consumption issues of the products. In recent years, with the deepening of the country's green development concept, environmental protection and energy-saving technologies in mining engineering machinery products are increasingly favored by users. At present, the brands that occupy a certain market share of this model have all laid out new energy products, and the use of electric transmission systems not only benefits the improvement of load capacity, but also simplifies the structure of the entire vehicle and improves its efficiency.