JP3209136B2 - Semi-trailer load measuring device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an apparatus for measuring a load on a semi-trailer.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art For example, Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open Publication No. Sho 63-148838 discloses a vehicle for connecting a semi-trailer to a tractor via a coupler. There has been proposed a device provided with a display device that converts and displays the air pressure of the air suspension into a load.

[0003]

However, with the above configuration, the shaft load on the drive axle of the tractor can be detected for the time being, but the measurement is performed only on the tractor side. There is a problem that the load cannot be measured accurately. For this reason, it is conceivable to provide measuring means also on the semitrailer side.However, if the semitrailer side is measured with a single sensor, sufficient measurement accuracy cannot be secured. If the number of sensors is simply increased, the wiring between the tractor and the semi-trailer is complicated, and there is a problem that the connection work when connecting or separating the tractor and the semi-trailer is complicated.

The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and an object of the present invention is to provide a semi-trailer load measuring device capable of accurately measuring a semi-trailer load.

[0005]

The above object is achieved by the following means.

According to the first aspect of the present invention, a plurality of semitrailer-side load sensors provided to generate an output corresponding to the load supported by the wheels of the semitrailer, and a coupler of a tractor to which the semitrailer is connected are supported. A tractor-side load sensor provided to generate an output corresponding to a load; a semitrailer-side control means provided in the semitrailer for calculating a total value of outputs of the respective semitrailer-side load sensors; and the tractor provided in the tractor. And a tractor-side control means for measuring a load of the semi-trailer based on outputs from the side sensor and the semi-trailer-side control means. As described above, according to the first aspect of the present invention, the load on the semi-trailer is measured using the tractor-side load sensor and the plurality of semi-trailer-side load sensors, so that highly accurate measurement is possible. Also, after the outputs of the plurality of semi-trailer-side load sensors are once summed by the semi-trailer-side control means provided in the semi-trailer,
Since the power is supplied to the tractor side, the wiring between the tractor and the semi-trailer can be reduced. For this reason, high-precision measurement can be realized, and at the same time, the increase in the number of wirings can be suppressed, and the operation of connecting or separating the tractor and the semi-trailer can be suppressed.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the apparatus for measuring a semi-trailer load according to the first aspect, the wiring between the semitrailer-side control means and the tractor-side control means is connected to the tractor and the semitrailer. The operation is performed via an empty terminal of an anti-lock brake cable provided therebetween. As described above, according to the second aspect of the present invention, the wiring between the semitrailer-side control means and the tractor-side control means is connected by using the empty terminal of the antilock brake cable, so that the connection between the tractor and the semitrailer is established. It becomes possible to measure the load of the semi-trailer while keeping the separation work at the same level as before.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the semi-trailer load measuring device according to the first aspect, the semi-trailer-side control means outputs a pulse signal having a frequency corresponding to the calculation result to the tractor-side control means. The tractor-side control means determines whether there is a failure on the semi-trailer side based on the voltage value of the output from the semi-trailer side control means. As described above, the semitrailer-side control means can detect the calculation result from the frequency of the signal output from the tractor-side control means, and at the same time, can determine the failure from the voltage of the signal output. Increase can be suppressed.

[0009]

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a semi-trailer load measuring apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention. However, the dimensions, materials, shapes, relative arrangements, and the like of the components described in this embodiment are not intended to limit the scope of the present invention unless otherwise specified, and are merely illustrative examples. It's just

FIGS. 1 to 7 show an embodiment of the present invention. First, the coupling structure of the coupled vehicle will be described in detail with reference to FIG.
A coupler 3 is mounted on the rear part, and a semi-trailer 4 is connected to the tractor 1 via the coupler 3. Coupler 3
As shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, a base plate 5 mainly fixed to a chassis frame 2 of a tractor 1 and a coupler base 6 oscillated on the base plate 5 in the vehicle body pitching and rolling directions. It has a support shaft that freely supports it.

Specifically, the support shaft includes a beam shaft 7 that allows swinging in the vehicle body pitching direction and a rolling shaft 8 that allows swinging in the vehicle body rolling direction.
The beam shaft 7 is mounted on bearings provided on a pair of brackets 9, 9 fixed in the width direction of the base plate 5, and the rolling shaft 8 is mounted on a shaft support hole 10 formed at the center of the beam shaft 7. Each is pivoted. The coupler base 6 has a pair of bosses 11, 11 formed facing each other on the front and rear surfaces of the lower surface thereof, and a fitting hole 12 through which the rolling shaft 8 passes is formed.
And the shaft support hole 10 at the center of the rolling shaft 8,
The rolling shaft 8 is inserted therethrough.

As shown in FIG. 1, the tractor 1 or the semitrailer 4 has a support shaft, such as a rolling shaft, for supporting the coupler base 6 in order to detect the loaded load of the trailer 4 with high accuracy. A load sensor (described later) is attached to each of the equalizer pins 17 (a total of four right and left) of the Reiko suspension 16 that supports the rear portion of the semi-trailer 4.

In the Reiko suspension 16,
Brackets 31a, 31b, 31c, 30d are fixed to the front and rear of the axles 30a, 30b, 30c, respectively, and as shown in FIG.
b equalizer beam 33 through the equalizer pin 17
Are also supported, and an equalizer beam 33 is similarly provided on an intermediate bracket 31c (not shown) via an equalizer pin 32.
Is supported.

Then, the intermediate brackets 31b, 31c
Are respectively supported on both ends of the equalizer beam 33. Further, the leaf spring 34 is provided between the upper surfaces of both ends and each bracket 31a.
With the slide seat 37 interposed therebetween, the center part is axle 39 via the U bolt 19 and the fixing plate 38.
, And each lower fixing plate 38 is connected to a bracket 31 a to 31 c in front of each axle 39 by a radius rod 40.

FIG. 4 shows a mounting structure of a load sensor to each of the equalizer pins 17 and the rolling shaft 8.

As shown in FIG. 4A, a sensor for detecting a shearing force in a sensor mounting hole 8a formed from the shaft end face of the shaft core of the rolling shaft 8 of the coupler 3,
For example, a magnetostrictive load sensor (hereinafter referred to as a tractor-side load sensor) 55a is fixed by press-fitting or laser welding, and, as shown in FIG. 4B, a shaft core of the equalizer pin 17 of the equalizer beam 33. A sensor for detecting a shearing force, for example, a magnetostrictive load sensor (hereinafter referred to as a trailer-side load sensor) 55b is fixed to the sensor mounting hole 17a formed from the shaft end face by press fitting or laser welding.

The tractor-side and trailer-side load sensors 55a and 55b are respectively formed by winding a drive coil and an output coil around a plate-like sensor body made of a ferromagnetic material such as perlite, respectively, at right angles to each other. The sensor mounting holes 8a and 17a are inserted into the sensor mounting holes 8a and 17a such that the detection center is located in the maximum shear stress area and the plate surface of the sensor body is along the axial direction of the sensor mounting holes 8a and 17a. Will be arranged.

In order to prevent a decrease in measurement accuracy due to an unbalanced load, the rolling shaft 8 and the equalizer pins 17 are required.
A pair of tractor-side load sensors 55a
(Two in total) and the trailer-side load sensor 55b (eight in total) are provided.
It may be a single load sensor.

In the coupler 3, the tractor-side load sensor 55a is provided on the rolling shaft 8 because
There is almost no effect of the vehicle longitudinal load acting upon driving and braking of the vehicle, and almost no effect of torsion of the base plate 5, etc.
This is because sufficient strength can be maintained even when the tractor-side load sensor 55a is incorporated. Therefore, if the strength of the beam shaft 7 is sufficient, it can be incorporated into the beam shaft 7.

Next, with reference to FIGS. 5 and 6, a description will be given of a load measuring system and a display system of a connected vehicle.

In FIG. 5, reference numeral 46 denotes a tractor-side controller (tractor-side control means) disposed on the tractor side;
Reference numeral 0 denotes a trailer-side controller (semi-trailer-side control means) provided on the semitrailer side, which is constituted by an ECU including an input / output unit, an arithmetic processing unit (CPU and the like), a memory, and the like.

The tractor-side and trailer-side controllers 46 and 60 are provided with power supply terminals 20 so that the load on the semi-trailer 4 can be measured while the operation of connecting and disconnecting the tractor 1 and the semi-trailer 4 is the same as before. ,
21, an antilock brake cable (JASO D613-90) which has a connector 26 between the tractor 1 side and the semitrailer 4 side. ) 2
7 are connected via empty terminals. In this case, the ground wire is shared with the ground wire for the antilock control device to prevent an increase in the number of connections.

The above-described anti-lock brake cable 27 usually has two empty terminals, and these can be used as a power supply line and a signal line, so that the anti-lock brake cable can be effectively used. When the key switch 28 and the load measuring switch 29 are ON,
Driving power is supplied from the power supply (24 V) 15 to the tractor-side controller 46 and the semitrailer-side controller 60.

As shown in FIG. 6, the signal lines drawn from the transmitting coil and the detecting coil of the pair of tractor-side load sensors 55a and the pair of trailer-side load sensors 55b provided for each of the equalizer pins 17 are: Are connected to input units of a tractor-side controller 46 and a semi-trailer-side controller 60 via an amplifier 45, a smoother 47, and a V / F converter 48 for frequency-converting the detected voltage.

The semi-trailer-side controller 60 operates the V / F converter 48 for each of the semi-trailer-side load sensors 55b for each equalizer pin 17 by an arithmetic processing unit.
Are counted per unit time to obtain frequencies, and then the sum of these frequencies (sum of the outputs of each load sensor 55b)
Is corrected in accordance with the driving environment, and the correction is input to the arithmetic processing unit of the tractor-side controller 46.

On the other hand, similarly to the semi-trailer-side controller 60, the tractor-side controller 46 counts a signal from the V / F converter 48 per unit time by its arithmetic processing unit to obtain a frequency, which corresponds to the operating environment. After the correction, the corrected frequency and the trailer controller 6
After adding the frequency inputted from 0, the load is converted into the load of the entire semi-trailer 4 so as to obtain the load, and a signal based on the load is sent to a display device 49 such as an LCD at predetermined time intervals to perform work management. It is configured to display the load of the semi-trailer to a person or the like.

The above correction is performed by the semi-trailer-side controller 60 in which the vehicle body inclination angle sensor for detecting the inclination angle in the rolling and pitching directions and the temperature sensor for measuring the temperature (air temperature or the like) involved in the thermal expansion / contraction of the equalizer pin 17. In addition, the tractor-side controller 46 detects the inclination of the tractor 1 in the rolling and pitching directions and detects the temperature (such as air temperature) involved in the thermal expansion and contraction of the rolling shaft 8. Is performed based on a detection signal from a temperature sensor that measures the steering angle and a steering angle sensor that detects the steering angle of the tractor. Therefore, by these corrections, the error due to the operating environment is removed, and the correct measurement of the loaded load of the semi-trailer 4 is performed.

The correction values for the various correction parameters, such as the temperature and the vehicle body inclination angle, are obtained in advance by a test and then stored as a reference map in a fixed memory inside each of the controllers 46, 60.
Can obtain various correction values by referring to this reference map.

The tractor-side controller 46 is configured to determine whether there is a failure on the semi-trailer 4 side based on the voltage value of the output from the semi-trailer side controller 60. For example, when the voltage on the semitrailer 4 side is constant at 0V, disconnection is determined when the voltage is constant at 5V or 24V, and the respective cases are displayed on the display device 49, and a warning is issued to the work manager or the like by warning the operation manager or the like. Prompt.

In the loading system, in order to keep a record of the loaded state of the semi-trailer 4 as a record, the tractor-side controller 46 is connected to a recording device 50 for recording the loaded load in correspondence with the detection signals of the various sensors. At the same time, in order to carry out the loading correctly, the loading is measured when the vehicle speed is 0 Km / s based on the vehicle speed sensor, and the set value adjustment for the load calibration is performed via the communication terminal such as RS232C. The container 52 is connected.

Therefore, according to the load measuring system, the output of the semi-trailer-side load sensor 55b provided for each equalizer pin 17 is output to the semi-trailer-side controller 60.
Since a signal corresponding to the total value is output to the tractor-side controller 46 once, the increase in the number of wires between the tractor side and the trailer side can be suppressed.
Further, the loading load of the entire semitrailer 1 can be detected with high accuracy from the frequency of the signal output calculated by the semitrailer-side controller 60 and the tractor-side controller 46, and at the same time, the failure can be determined from the voltage of the signal output.

Next, the basic control of the load measuring system will be described with reference to the block diagram of FIG. 5 and the flowchart of FIG.

First, when the key switch 28 is turned on,
In step S1, the counter is initialized to 0, and in step S2
And the load measuring switch 29 (see FIG. 5) is turned on.
Or OFF. If it is OFF, the routine is repeated until it turns ON. When the load measurement switch 29 is turned on in step S2, the process proceeds to the next step S3, where it is detected whether or not the vehicle speed is 0 Km and whether or not the vehicle speed is 0 Km for 10 seconds based on the signal of the vehicle speed sensor. , Check if the connected vehicle is stopped.

When the stop of the connected vehicle is confirmed in step S3, the parallel processing of steps S4a and S4 and subsequent steps is performed.

In steps S4a and S4b, the vehicle body tilt angle θ1 of the tractor 1 and the vehicle body tilt angle θ2 of the semitrailer 4 are obtained from the detection signals of the vehicle body tilt angle sensors of the tractor 1 and the semi-trailer 4, and thereafter, step S5a and step S5
5b, a pair of tractor-side load sensors 55
The sum (W2) of the detection output (W1) of FIG. 7A and the detection outputs of the semitrailer-side load sensors 55b provided in pairs for each shackle pin 17 is obtained. Then, it proceeds to step S6.

The detection output (W1) on the tractor-side load sensor side, the sum (W2) of the detection outputs on the semitrailer-side load sensor side, the vehicle body tilt angle (θ1) of the tractor 1, and the vehicle body tilt angle (θ2) of the semitrailer 4 ) By the following equation (1),
(2) and substitute the load (W
f), the load (Wr) on the semitrailer 4 side (equalizer pin side) is determined, and then the load (Wr) on the tractor 1 side is calculated.
f) Substituting the load (Wr) on the semi-trailer 4 side into the following equation (3) to determine the load (W) of the entire connected vehicle. Of course,
If the correction is required based on the detection values of the connection angle sensor and the temperature sensor, the correction based on the reference map is performed on Expression (1).

Load on tractor side (Wf) = W1 / cos θ1 (1) Load on semitrailer side (Wr) = W2 / cosθ2 (2) Load on semitrailer (W) = Wf + Wr (3)

Next, the operation proceeds to step S7 to calculate the elapsed time (t = t + 1). The operation proceeds to step S8 to determine whether the elapsed time is 2 seconds or more. If the elapsed time is 2 seconds or more, the operation proceeds to step S9. After the counter is set to 0, the process proceeds to step S2, and the loaded load of the connected vehicle is measured again.
That is, the value of the load is updated every 2 seconds, and the load is performed with high reliability.

When the load is measured, the set value adjuster 52 (see FIG. 1) may be used to calibrate "0" while the carrier is empty.

[0040]

As apparent from the above description, according to the present invention, the following excellent effects are exhibited.

(1) Since the loaded load of the semi-trailer is measured using the tractor-side load sensor and the plurality of semi-trailer-side load sensors, highly accurate measurement is possible, and the semi-trailer-side controller provided on the semi-trailer is used. Since the outputs of the plurality of load sensors on the semitrailer side are once summed and supplied to the tractor side, the wiring between the tractor and the semitrailer can be reduced. For this reason, it is possible to realize high-accuracy measurement and at the same time to suppress an increase in the number of wirings, and to suppress a complicated operation when connecting or separating the tractor and the semitrailer (claim 1).

(2) Since the wiring between the semi-trailer-side controller and the tractor-side controller is connected by using the vacant terminal of the anti-lock brake cable, the work for connecting and disconnecting the tractor and the semi-trailer is the same as the conventional operation. The load of the semi-trailer can be measured as it is (claim 2).

(3) The calculation result can be detected from the frequency of the signal output from the tractor-side controller, and at the same time, a failure judgment can be made from the voltage of the signal output, so that an increase in the number of wires between the tractor and the semitrailer is suppressed. (Claim 3).

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a system configuration diagram showing a relationship between a connected vehicle and a load measuring device according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 shows a coupler of a connected vehicle according to the present invention, and FIG.
2A is a cross-sectional view of the coupler as viewed from the rear of the semitrailer, and FIG. 2B is a partially cutaway side view of the coupler as viewed from the side of the semitrailer.

FIG. 3 is a detailed side view of a main part showing a Reiko suspension of the semi-trailer.

FIG. 4 is a main part detailed view showing a mounting structure of a trailer-side load sensor and a tractor-side load sensor according to the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing a system configuration of a load measuring device according to the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing a modulation system of the load measuring device according to the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing an embodiment of control contents of a controller according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Tractor 3 Coupler 4 Semi-trailer 7 Beam shaft 8 Rolling shaft 27 Antilock brake cable 46 Tractor-side controller (tractor-side control means) 55a Tractor-side load sensor 55b Trailer-side load sensor 48 Frequency converter 60 Trailer-side controller (trailer-side control) means)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continued on the front page (58) Field surveyed (Int. Cl. ⁷ , DB name) G01G 19/08-19/12 B60P 5/00 B62D 53/06

Claims (3)

(57) [Claims] 1. A semi-trailer-side load sensor provided to generate an output corresponding to a load supported by a wheel of a semi-trailer; and an output corresponding to a load supported by a coupler of a tractor to which the semi-trailer is connected. A tractor-side load sensor provided on the tractor; a semitrailer-side control means provided on the semitrailer for calculating a total value of outputs of the respective semitrailer-side load sensors; a tractor-side load sensor provided on the tractor; and the semitrailer-side. A tractor-side control unit for measuring the load on the semi-trailer based on an output from the control unit. 2. The semi-trailer load measuring device according to claim 1, wherein a wiring connection between said semi-trailer side control means and said tractor side control means is provided by an anti-lock provided between said tractor and said semi-trailer. A load measuring device for a semi-trailer, which is performed through an empty terminal of a brake cable. 3. The semi-trailer load measuring device according to claim 1, wherein the semi-trailer-side control means outputs a pulse signal having a frequency corresponding to the calculation result to the tractor-side control means, A semi-trailer mounted load measuring device, wherein the presence or absence of a failure on the semi-trailer side is determined based on a voltage value of an output from the semi-trailer side control means.