Wheel substitutes for land vehicles – With interposed friction drive belt
Patent
1992-08-12
1995-01-10
Stormer, Russell D.
Wheel substitutes for land vehicles
With interposed friction drive belt
305 35EB, 305 56, B62D 5524
Patent
active
053800761
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a rubber crawler belt used in a tracked vehicle represented by a construction machine, such as a bulldozer or a hydraulic excavator, and more particularly, to a core member and a lug pattern of a rubber crawler belt.
BACKGROUND ART
Conventionally, a tracked vehicle represented by a construction machine, such as a bulldozer and a hydraulic excavator, is driven by iron crawler belts rotated by power transmitted through drive wheels. The iron crawler belts are supported by the drive wheels, free wheels and upper and lower rollers provided between the drive and free wheels. Recently, rubber crawler belts also have been used instead of iron crawler belts in order to reduce noise and vibrations coming from the crawler belts and wheels. The rubber crawler belts are formed by equidistantly embedding metallic core members in endless rubber belts. The rubber crawler belts are driven by the engagement between the core members and the teeth of the drive wheels.
Generally, an iron crawler belt engages with every other tooth of an odd number of teeth of a drive wheel. Therefore, the teeth which engage with the iron crawler belt shift by one pitch every rotation thereof. In other words, every other tooth comes into engagement during one rotation and the other teeth come in the engagement during the next rotation. Such an every-other-tooth engagement reduces abrasion loss of the teeth of the drive wheel. However, this every-other-tooth engagement results in a large link pitch of the crawler belts in a large vehicle. When such a crawler belt is wound on the drive wheel and the free wheel, a large bending angle results between neighboring links and, thus, the crawler belt forms a polygonal shape. Thus, there is a problem that the impact of the links to the drive and free wheels becomes great and causes substantial noise and vibrations.
Such a problem is also found in a rubber crawler belt. In addition to that, a large bending angle of a rubber crawler belt wound on the drive and free wheels produces a large strain in the lugs provided on the ground contact surface of the rubber crawler belt and may result in a crack in a lug. Thus, durability of the rubber crawler belt decreases.
It has been believed that as in the case of an iron crawler belt, a single tooth of the drive wheel transmits more than a half of the entire driving force to a rubber crawler belt. Therefore, since the rubber and the core members must be adhered firmly, the area of right and left wing portions of a core member is made large to provide sufficient adhesion strength. As a result, the front-rear directional dimension of the wing portions of a core member becomes larger than the interval between the tips of the teeth, and, hence, makes it impossible to arrange core members so as to leave gaps therebetween which enable the teeth of a drive wheel to serially engage with the core members. Inevitably, a rubber crawler belt is formed which has a large double pitch for every-other-tooth engagement. Since such a rubber crawler belt has large gaps between rolling rail surfaces formed on the core members, lower rollers fall into the gaps during travelling of the vehicle and, thus, cause driving vibrations.
A rubber crawler belt of a short pitch may be formed which engages with every tooth of a drive wheel instead of every other tooth. However, there is another requirement that a large ground contact area of the lugs of a rubber crawler belt be provided in order to obtain low lug surface pressure, i.e., to provide sufficient abrasive service life of the lugs. Therefore, if one lug is provided for one core member in such a short pitch rubber crawler belt, freedom with respect to the shape of the lug decreases, and a large sheered area of soil cannot be obtained, resulting in reduced tractive power.
Further, because grooves are formed as bending portions between the core members, lower rollers are not firmly supported by portions between the core members. Therefore, there is a problem that during travelling of th
Kabushiki Kaisha Komatsu Seisakusho
Stormer Russell D.
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