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High-strength chains handle earth moving challenge

A Renold Chain product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 10, 2008

Varying the size of a chain's components in relationship to each other, even by the smallest amounts, can have a dramatic impact on the chain's performance.

A major manufacturer of earth moving vehicles and equipment has released a range of motor graders with a little help from Renold Chain.

Each grader in the new range was designed to be at least 30% more powerful than the model it was designed to replace, enabling customers to invest in smaller graders for the same jobs.

It all looked good on paper until designers realised that the extra load on the chain used to drive the grader's four rear wheels would significantly shorten its service life.

The next size up in the heavy-duty chain they were using would handle the extra load, but its increased size would mean completely redesigning the vehicle's chassis, which wasn't an option.

Finding a chain that would cope with the extra power wasn't going to be simple, because the company was already specifying a heavy-duty class chain and changing brands was unlikely to produce the results they sought.

The design team working on the new motor graders took the job to Renold's research and development engineers.

Renold's team believed that new materials alone weren't going to solve the problem and if a solution was to be found it was going lie in the complex world of chain geometry.

Varying the size of a chain's components in relationship to each other, even by the smallest amounts, can have a dramatic impact on the chain's performance.

To get the solution they were looking for Renold's engineers had to embark on a series of very lengthy calculations to predict the chain's performance after minutely altering the size of its component parts.

There are an almost limitless number of permutations in the size relationship between the relative sizes of a chain's components.

According to Dr Chris Lodge, Renold Chain's Engineering Manager, "We knew where we had to look and the answer lay in a mass of calculations".

"We were like physicists looking for the elusive theory of everything and we even had to make up new formula for some of the calculations as no-one had ever done this before".

In the end the solution involved y varying the relative sizes of the pin, inner plate, bush and roller.

To test the new chain it was fitted to motor graders operating in a quarry near the arctic circle.

The huge dumper trucks that carry aggregate in and out of the quarry destroy the dirt track roads on which they operate.

In order to keep them in good condition the motor graders work day and night following each truck out as it leaves and then return with other trucks as they arrive back at the quarry.

When it was fitted Renold's engineers predicted a six month service life but so far it has been operational for 10 months and there are no signs yet that it will need to be replaced anytime soon.

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