Construction Equipment

Excavators, agricultural equipment, fork lifts, and other heavy machinery

Simscape™ Multibody™ provides tools to design and analyze the dynamic behavior of a construction equipment. You can perform various analyses on a construction equipment, such as performance testing, safety analysis, control system analysis, and durability testing.

Featured Examples

Backhoe

Model a hydraulically actuated backhoe with closed-loop PID control.

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Crane Boom Arm Test Bench

Combine hydraulics modeling in Simscape™ Fluids™ with six-degree-of-freedom motion and animation in Simscape Multibody™. This example also shows how to parameterize, test, and compare design cases for a counterbalance valve in a crane boom arm test bench. A counterbalance valve allows an upstream flow from the back port to the load port through the check valve stage during cylinder rod extension, and it allows a downstream flow from the load port to the back port through the relief valve stage during cylinder rod retraction in the boom arm mechanism. A counterbalance valve help with the load holding, load actuation, speed control, and safety by controlling the piston motion of the boom cylinder.

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Forklift

Models a forklift which uses the hydraulic and pulley mechanisms to perform the lift action. The tilting of masts is also controlled by hydraulic cylinders. The forklift comprises of 3 masts, namely main mast, top mast and fork mast. The main mast is connected to the chassis by revolute joints and its tilting is governed by the hydraulic tilt cylinders. The top mast slides over the main mast and its motion is governed by the hydraulic lift cylinders. The fork mast slides on the top mast and hangs through belt-cable circuits which drives the movement of the fork mast. A common warehouse application is shown in this example where the objective of the forklift is to grab a box, pass over a bump and place the box in the racks. Spatial Contact Force blocks are used at all contact locations to model the contact between the bodies. The contact between the ground surface and the wheels are modeled using infinite plane block and the contact between the forks and the box are modeled using the point blocks.

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Hydraulic Interface - Dump Trailer with Hydraulic Cylinder

A dump trailer powered by a double-acting hydraulic cylinder. The cylinder actuates a scissor hoist mechanism that raises and lowers the dump bed. The model provides an example of how to interface Simscape™ Multibody™ joints with Simscape components that have mechanical domain ports.

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Tower Crane with Trolley and Hoist

Models a tower crane with a trolley and a hoist. The hoist can raise and lower a load, and the trolley moves the load towards and away from the tower. Blocks from the belts and cables library are used to model the pulleys that control lifting the load and moving the trolley.

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