Specialists from the SUSU Mechanical Engineering Research Institute have designed a garbage truck capable of operating both on an internal combustion engine and on electric power. Electric motor in the transport will ensure its silent and environmentally friendly operation when working in the city. The truck will be produced at the Ural Automobile Plant.
At the first stage of work, SUSU employees had the task of carrying out traction energy calculations, indicating which components were needed for the electric platform. For this purpose, a study of the operating cycle of garbage trucks in Chelyabinsk was carried out, and a route map was built.
"To understand the operating cycle of the garbage truck, we recorded the stop and travel time, mileage, route, etc. Based on these data, we carried out energy calculations and found out what technical characteristics the electric motor should have in order for the garbage truck to have enough energy. Students from the SUSU Department of Automotive Engineering also took part in the work on studying the cycle," explains Ramil Zakirov, Director of the Mechanical Engineering Research Institute.
The operational and technical characteristics of the required battery, electric motor, storage devices, etc. were experimentally calculated. The next stage was planning the placement of components in the machine body.
"We needed to assemble the truck in such a way that it would work on the chassis of the Ural Automobile Plant. Previously, an electric platform had not been designed on the chassis of the Ural vehicle. Based on our layout drawings, the plant purchased the equipment necessary for the production of a garbage truck. The number one task in mechanical engineering today is to preserve the environment. To achieve this, modern mechanical engineering strives to use electric platforms both in the design of passenger cars and trucks," says Ramil Zakirov.
Jointly with our industrial partner, Kanopus company (the city of Zlatoust), the SUSU engineers developed a program for controlling traction electrical equipment as part of the machine. The technology is of the hybrid type because it has more than one energy source. It is assumed that the garbage truck will use electric traction when driving around the city, and an internal combustion engine when driving outside the city.
"Currently, a prototype of the truck is undergoing a series of tests at the plant. In total, the garbage truck covered about 100 km using an electric motor during repeated trips along the Miass – Zlatoust route. At the end of the tests, the truck awaits the traditional stage of refinement of shortcomings identified," says Aleksandr Vedernikov, Development Director of the Ural Automobile Plant.
South Ural State University is a university of transformations, where innovative research is conducted in most of the priority fields of science and technology development. In accordance with the strategy of scientific and technological development of the Russian Federation, the university is focused on the development of big scientific interdisciplinary projects in the field of digital industry, materials science, and ecology. In 2021 SUSU became the winner in the competition under the Priority 2030 program. The university acts as a regional project office of the World-class Ural Interregional Research and Education Centre (UIREC), which is aimed at solving the tasks of the Science and Universities National Project.
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