A Case Study of Interface Technology Applying to Wheel Loader's Modularization

With the rapid development of economy, the demand that customers need mechanicalproducts becomes more and more personalized and diversified. All that will force theenterprises to strengthen its own ability of technical innovation and win the marketcompetitiveness under the premise of continuing to reduce the cost and shorten thedelivery time. Modular design arises in this kind of situation. And it has graduallybecome one of the most advanced manufacturing technologies that conform to China’smanufacturing current situation and characteristic to a large extent. It assembles themodules of different functions into those personalized products quickly that meet thecustomer’s demand through the scientific modular system. And because of the seriesdesign of the module, lot-sizing production and systematic management, the productioncost has been reduced greatly. Therefore, the enterprises have a very pressing need ofapplication and implementation of modularized design theory. But at present,modularized design theory is imperfect and technology is immature. Especially about thedesign of the module interface that plays a key role in the module combination, thereisn’t complete or systematic theory method to be formed.Based on mentioned above, this paper will sum up a set of modular design methods onbasis of those of modular interface design from plenty of examples on module interfaceof wheel loaders. All those methods will match with the variants and combinations in themodular design. What will improve the grave availability of modules, promote the rapiddesign of products, shorten the cycle of product design and reduce production costs.Based on the wheel loader as the research object, this paper expounds the researchbackground and growing trend of the module. It briefly explains the research anddevelopment characteristics and design requirements of the wheel loader, points out themodular principles and methods, shows the modular results and makes a simple analysisof relativity. All that will be as the basis of study on the interface. Besides, it summarizesand improves the theoretical basis of the interface and designs the coding method ofwheel loader module interface.This paper sums up the characteristics of module interface through the analysis of thestructure and size of the interface. It makes technological process of module interface’sbasic mode and chooses the main parameters of it to make the interface of the seriesrealized by making use of AHP. Meanwhile, this paper also puts forward the redesign themodule interface, establishes the evaluation mechanism, formulates the interface designdocuments to modular database and summarizes the general methods and procedures ofmodule interface design. In the end, this paper proves the maneuverability of the methodby setting the interface design of an enterprise’s5T series of work devices of loader andappurtenance an example.Through the relevant investigation in the enterprise, the results show that the designmethod speeds up the process of the wheel loader configuration, improve the efficiencyand quality of modular design, reduce the strength of the designer’s work, accelerate thedemand the enterprises respond to the customers and enhance the market competition ofthe enterprise.