Design&Analysis of the Side Arm of the Two Drive Side Arm Charger for Heavy Load

Power plants, steel plants, cement plants, other metal processing plants require raw materials in bulk quantity. Rail infrastructure in India, due to its low cost& energy efficiency allows these materials to be handled much cheaper than road. It is obvious to have efficient unloading facilities in plants to unload the material received by railway wagons. Track hoppers& wagon tipplers are the options available for mechanized unloading, of which wagon tipplers proved to be economical& have high demands. At wagon tippler unloading stations, wagon need to be placed on tippler table one by one where it is hold by hydraulic clamping arrangement. Tippler further rotates the wagon to discharge the contents of wagon into hopper. Side arm charger machine plays a key role in placement of wagon on tippler table. It is working on a parallel track, has got eccentric arm which couples with wagon from front& pulls the wagons to place them one after another on tippler table. It can handle entire stock of the wagons coming in one rake, approximately 60 nos. Sometimes there are requirements to handle less number of wagons at a time due to customer specific requirements or it depends on the space availability. The present work includes an effort to design and analyze the side arm of side arm charger machine for moderate pulling load equivalent to 30-35 nos. of wagon pulling. It includes design, 3D modelling of side arm& its analysis by Finite Element Analysis (FEA)