Black_Rose2007/07/29 19:02:55조회수 87

2.00.09 - Livestock

2.00.09 - Livestock

For a long time already remained in the past the times of mass cattle haul from the Wild West to slaughterhouses of Chicago and other east cities of America, but nowadays also hundreds of thousands heads of horned cattle, pigs and sheep are daily loaded into trailers to be transported from farm to farm or to be sent for processing. Cattle transportation has its own peculiarities, and many truckers still consider it as rather hard work. The basic requirements for cattle transportation, defining a trailers design, are connected with economy, ecology and care about the health of "live stock".
Manufacturing companies produce a variety of models and versions of trailers differing by a number of parameters starting with material (steel, aluminium) up to sizes. Modern trailers for distant transportations which on the purpose of natural ventilation and weight reduction are made basically of the punched or lamellar aluminium cross-section with the improved corrosion-resistant coating have the following characteristics:
• max dimensions – 53' x 102" x 13'6"
• volume – till 5650 cubic ft
• weight – till 28.6 thousand lbs
The trailers are equipped with pneumatic suspensions, electronic braking systems and systems of stabilization, special means for loading and unloading (ground and in docks) and inside they are necessarily divided into compartments. Not a rarity two-three tier constructions, allowing to transport up to 40 and more adult cows and up to 180 pigs or young animals. Special attention is given to questions of comfort for the "passengers" semitrailers are equipped with climate control systems, fans and even autodrinking bowls. All this is done to reduce vibrations and lists at movement as much as possible, to protect live cargo from adverse external influences (smoke, dust, rain, snow, cold drafts and so forth) and from possible traumas at transportation, loading and a unloading.
One more problem which pushes designers in searches of newer and newer decisions is aerodynamics of the road train that suffers due to the dimensions of a trailer – in fact it can be almost one and a half meter at height above comparing with a usual "dry-van" – accordingly, and additional charges on fuel. For this reason for trailing livestock cabovers-trucks are rarely used, instead – conventional type, equipped by aerodynamic panels, rear wings and other similar adaptations are used most frequently. In the end of 1990th years even NASA joined the process of solving this problem, and the research on trailers aerodynamics were held, by the way, in NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center that is situated at the Edwards Air Force Base in California.