TP45 Type Crawler Pipelayer Modelingand Key Structure Research

The pipelayer belongs to the petroleum pipeline equipment with special hoisting construction. With the increase of the construction environment’s complexity, it also requires the continuous upgrading of the pipelayer’s lifting capacity. The working state, static and dynamic characteristics of pipelayer’s key structure has a direct relation with the whole machine’s performance and life. On the other hand, in order to avoid hidden danger in the working process and improve the working efficiency, so it is very necessary that carrying on researching analysis, optimization and experimental verification on the pipelayer’s key parts. These work verified the design is reasonable, and can provide guidance for the design and improvement of large tonnage pipelayer, which is of practical significance.Based on the TP45 type crawler pipelayer prototype as the main body, this paper determines crawler travelling mechanism, boom and counterweight mechanism as the main research objects firstly. Combining the main technical parameters of pipelayer and the working principle of key structure, modeling and assembling of main parts of the machine were done by 3D modeling method. Then through the theoretical calculation, stress analysis of the crawler travelling mechanism in the actual working condition was carried out, which provides the theoretical basis for the design of crawler travelling mechanism.Boom is the main component of pipelayer. Its strength and weight is related to the lifting capacity of pipelayer. Therefore, taking research on pipelayer boom is very necessary. According the working characteristics of pipelayers, Ansys is used for the loading analysis and finite element modeling analysis of TP45 pipelayer boom. By comparing the stress and deformation values with allowable values, the pipelayer boom’s strength and rigidity were also checked. Finally, test verification and comparative analysis were carried out. On this basis, with total volume of the boom as objective function, through the APDL language and approximation method to optimize the design of the boom and obtain the optimal solution, which makes the design more reasonable. The result shows that the method verifies the feasibility and reference of the product design, effectively avoids a lot of type test work, which has important guiding significance to the improvement and manufacture of pipelayer boom.Counterweight mechanism is an important part of pipelayer and this mechanism repeated swing and folding under various working conditions. The rationality of its structure and strength of critical part directly affects the lifting performance and safety and reliability of construction operation.In order to ensure the rationality of the design, researching on four-linkage counterweight mechanism of a pipelayer, the virtual prototype model was established by UG and ADAMS. Kinetic Equation of the mechanism was created based on theory. The rigid-flexible coupling model was set up in ADAMS and after simulation the curve of cylinder thrust and the most dangerous moment of upper linkage are obtained. By comparative analysis between calculated value and experimental value, the correctness of simulation and the strength of upper linkage were verified. This study provides guidance for the design and reliability research of counterweight mechanism.