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Tip-Up Lorry Ewuals Three Rail Way Cars

by Victor MOLCHANOV and Ivan NOVIKOV
from PRAVDA

The dust had not yet settled after a thunderous explosion before powerful tip-up lorries were already carrying away blocks of iron ore from the huge quarry.

The lorries made at the Byelorussian Motor-Car Works, in the town of Zhodino, near Minsk, assist miners, colliers and hydroelectric project builders. These lorries handle annually about 2.5 thousand million tons of rock.

"Now we are turning out lorries capable of transporting loads of 27 and 40 tons," commented Z. L. Sirotkin, the plant's chief engineer. "One of the targets set by the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1971, reads: Organise the production of automatic tip-up lorries and tip up lorry trains with a hoisting capacity of up to 120 tons for the ore-mining industry. This directly applies to our plant.

"The Zhodino plant has developed a 'family' of lorries of three basic models, with a capacity of 75, 120 and 180 tons respectively. Recently, the 75-ton tip-up lorry successfully passed tests and was recommended for serial manufacture. The prototype of a 120-ton lorry will soon be produced. Miners of the Kuznetsk Coal Basin will be the first to 'sample' it."

In the plant's experimental shop we felt as though we were in a kingdom of giants. The driver has to climb a 10 rung ladder to reach the cabin of a 120-ton tip-up lorry.

"The increase in the lorries’ load capacity." explained the chief engineer, "stems mainly from progress in open pit mining. Employed in open pit workings, heavy-duty lorries cut capital expenditures on digging by one-third and allow for the use of excavators with large-capacity buckets. The quarries are growing deeper every year. In the 1950s the quarry's depth was, on average, 50 metres. By now it has doubled. The slopes along which rock is delivered are becoming steeper...

"Our 'quarry toiler' has other distinctions from its counterparts which race along asphalted roads. Operating over a small territory, the tip-up lorry has to be highly manoeuvrable, have a sharper turn radius, be safe for the driver and easy to handle.

"The load upon the lorry's axles when the excavator dumps ore into its body rises eight times. The usual leaf springs cannot make up for such a difference in weight. The plant design engineers have devised pneumatic springs with hydraulic shock-absorbers.

"Roads in quarries are difficult, with long climbs and steep turns. The usual gearboxes won't do here. Designers have suggested a hydromechanical transmission. It has already been applied in 27- and 40 ton lorries."

The best answer to the problem in the case of the automatic tip-up lorries carrying loads of more than 60 tons is electric .transmission. It has been devised by the Byelorussian Motor-Car Plant engineers jointly with experts of the Moscow Dynamo Plant. Each driving wheel has its own electric engine. All lorries of particularly great hoisting capacity have been fitted with such wheels.

"Work in deep quarries will be done by what we call trolleycarrier — a new type of lorry," the chief engineer explained. "On an even road it is powered by its own engine. In order to make steep climbs, the lorry is connected to electrical network.

"The new lorries will, naturally, require more powerful engines. A 75-ton lorry needs an engine of up to 1,000 horsepower, a 180-ton lorry one of 2,000-2,500 horse-power. The designers set their hopes upon gas-turbine power plants. Among the advantages of the turbine are low-toxic exhausts and ease of starting in hard frosts (winters are severe in the greater part of the Soviet Union). True enough, so far, such engines require more fuel than diesels. The plant is conducting research which will shortly- make it possible to equip our lorries with gas-turbine engines."

"What tyres do you use for such giants?"

"The wheel diameter of a 75-ton lorry is 2.5 metres while the wheel diameter of a 180-ton lorry is 3.5 metres. The tyres are more than one metre wide."

The giant Byelorussian tip-up lorries are the fruit of creative cooperation between researchers and workers of many industries. These lorries are brainchildren of machine-builders as well as chemists and elcctrict welders, experts in electronics and miners, engine-builders and metallurgists.

Sputnik. №5 May 1974