TECHNOSPEAK
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• Over the years Scania and Commercial Motor have together put an exceptionally wide ranging series of papers in front of Britain's truck and PSV operators.
This year's conference built on this solid base by addressing the most important issues facing commercial vehicle operators to-day — the rise of electronic componentry and systems in road transport. Like it or not electronic systems are here to stay, and they will be increasingly adopted in commercial vehicles in the years ahead. The following papers examine the problems that they create, and suggest some of the solutions.
• ELECTRONICS LENNART BERGQVIST • Lennart Bergqvist, director of the Scania division of Saab-Scania responsible for the development and production of truck and bus engines and transniission, presented the paper Electronics in Trucks.
Many consider the electronic systems used in aircraft to be highly sophisticated, said Bergqvist, yet for a number of reasons truck technology occupies a unique position.
It is evident that both environment and handling put greater demands on the electronics of a truck. Truck electronics is not a difficult subject but, due to their complexity and the high demands put on them, electronic components of a truck are entitled to receive the attention, treatment and the maintenance that the manufacturer prescribes.
So what is wanted from truck electronics?
Scania has settled for the philosophy to develop and sell such electronic systems that are of real benefit to truck customers in areas of safety, economy, comfort and performance, said Bergqvist.
Electronic systems on a truck can be categorised as active control systems, advisory systems and diagnostic systems. Practically all systems now include some form of trouble-shooting function. CAG, EDC, ABS and ELB are some of the electronic systems now used on trucks.
Electronics are here to stay, said Bergqvist. We believe these systems will be of real benefit to customers, but never forget that the best brain and the best sensor will always be the driver, he concluded.
In the question-and-answer session that followed, Bill Montague was the first to raise a point from the floor. He said he was concerned with the comparison made with aircraft where duplicated and triplicated systems caused 40% of aircraft fault reports. He asked for a system to identify any fault and for secondary systems that could be switched in, in the event of a fault in the primary system.
Bergqvist replied that double functions were included where safety was involved. Individual controls will be kept in separate units with built-in diagnostics. Scania is thinking along aircraft lines when it comes to electric cables and connectors.
Tom Llewellyn, managing director of Econafreight said: "Parliament recently criticised the 30% downtime on aircraft due to electronic faults. Electronics should only be used to serve a useful purpose — what we really need is just one reliable circuit that does not fail at all."
Bergqvist said: "We think there is a need for CAG in distribution and there is a high demand in forest haulage where the driver needs to keep both hands on the wheel.
Llewellyn replied that once a system is fitted in a model the operator is faced with paying for it. The manufacturer should consult more with the operator to supply only what is wanted and see to it that it is fully developed before use. "Further complexity will introduce the potential of greater down time," he warned.
Peter Miller, managing director of Goodway Transport, said: "All technical advances need to convert into commercial value. We have a three-year replacement programme. Residual values are the same for CAG and non-CAG vehicles. Overall capital expenditure outweights operational savings."
Bergqvist commented: "All systems are optional — if you don't want them there is no need to have them. I am surprised that you find no payoff in the residual values."
John Walter, operations director for Robson Distribution, made the point that there is always a conflict between safety and cost.
"Legislation on emissions will be met by electronic engine management," said Bergqvist, but we would never develop the system unless it was of benefit to the operator."
Another delegate thought that optional equipment had a habit of becoming incorporated in the standard specification after a period of time, then the operator ends up having to pay extra not to have it."
Llewellyn was in favour of ABS and would like to see it fitted as standard to trailers as well as tractive units as the increased volume would bring the price down.
Basil Gamjee, workshop manager for Southern Bulk, said that ABS was already paying for itself in increased tyre life, but he would like manufacturers to introduce courses to train his men to repair them.
Consultant engineer Marcus Jacobsen suggested that gold plating would overcome the contact corrosion problem in connectors but Bergqvist was not so sure that the benefits would outweight cost.
Terry Goldrick thought that engineers have a basic fear of electronics but felt that they had the major responsibility of moving the industry further towards its greater use.
• LOAD MONITORING DAVID PITS IN David Pitts of PM Electronics — with his colleague Geoff Mountain as backup — presented a paper on the current state of on-board weighing systems. He began by outlining the unfortunate history and reputation of such systems: "Many operators have heard of such devices but have never actually seen one. Others have seen one on film, but only a few have got one of these elusive systems to show, and many of those wish they had never troubled to get one.
"American transport operators, however, have had highly accurate electronic on-board weighing systems for over a decade," he said.
The North American logging industry had been the breeding ground for these systems because overloading is such a problem and the design criteria had been very demanding. "It had to operate accurately, efficiently, and effectively under the worst possible environment. It had to fimction on uneven terrain, and withstand water, frost and high humidity. It had to have an accuracy of plus or minus 1% and an operating temperature range of —20°C to +60°C. It needed to be simple to operate and to require minimal maintenance.
The American solution was to use load cells: "These loadcells were incorporated between the body and the main
chassis. They were immensely strong, totally environmentally sealed, and each capable of supporting a 50,000kg load. The loadcells were measuring not only the load passing through a vehicle component, such as the axle or spring, but also the load passing through the loadcell itself," said Pitts.
"Each loadcell was designed and positioned so that 100% of the actual payload was monitored, weight distribution front and rear could be accurately controlled, and nett and gross weights could be displayed at the touch of a button.
"The major benefits gained through using payload management systems (PMS)," said Pitts, "are increased driver and vehicle productivity, a decrease in risks of mechanical failure — due to fatigue through overload — along with significant time, fuel and maintenance savings."
After describing typical installations, Pitts explained out some of the claimed savings through using PMS. "Experience to date indicates that an average of 3.5 hours timesaving each week, along with lacreases in payload capacity in the order of 2-3% each and every trip, can be achieved with PMS," he said. "Taking the typical daily costs of operating such a vehicle (a 38-tonne bulk tipper) at between 2180 and 2260 (based on a 12-hour operating day) it is possible, by saving 3.5 hours a week, to enjoy a 252-a-week minimum saving. With the current cost of a PMS system, a return on capital is possible in just over 12 months.
Tom Llewellyn of Econofreight said that loadcell technology was not new. The DTp had put most of the available systems to the test at the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, and found them to be inadequate. Had the PM system been tested by THRI2 he asked, adding that: "If you want to sell to us, you'll have to have the proof." Geoff Mountain replied that the PM system had not been tested by TRRL, but had been tested by other authorities in Europe and America.
John Eastman of Whitbread was worried about onboard weighers for split loads. How close, he wondered, was the PM system to being approved by the Board of Trade as legal in trade for delivering split loads? Mountain replied that the system was now approaching the accuracy of a plated static weighbridge: "We're not far from that requirement and approval."
Marcus Jacobsen, a consultant, raised the problem of drift in loadcells: how often did they need to be recalibrated, and could you tell when they were drifting? His point was followed up by John Walter of Robsons, who also wanted to know if these new systems, when improperly operated, would give that information out, as did the ticket on a static bridge.
Bert Nettleship and John Walter of Robsons picked out further points: despite spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on static weighbridges, said Nettleship, his company still did not have Board of Trade approval for them. Walter was still concerned about recalibration of on-board weighing devices; Mountain finally stated that the PM devices should be recalibrated every 12 months.
Basil Gamjee of Southern Bulk was more concerned with the price of a system. When told by Mountain that a typical system with four loadcells would cost around 22,750, Gamjee's retort was unequivocal: "I'll stick with hydraulics" This company uses an on-board weighing system which measures the hydraulic pressure in the tipping ram. automobile and are influencing vehicle design, said Rodney Morement of Philips.
In some cases the inclusion of electronics is the result of legislation: emision regulations, for example, have forced the development of engine management systems and emission control systems, while safety regulation have promoted the advance of active occupantprotection devices.
By the end of the century, it is estimated, up to one third of a vehicle's cost will be accountd for by on-board electronics. Sophisticated combinations of different systems (diagnostics, radio aerials, communications, navigations and the like) will appear within the vehicle as information centres.
At the Geldrop Project Centre Philips is developing an electronic "co-pilot" to keep track of a vehicle and plan a route. The system is called CARIN — Car Information and Navigation System.
The CARIN system is selfcontained, using a compact disc as a storage medium for the road-map data. The performance of the dead-reckoning navigation technique, based on information from an electronic compass and a set of wheelsensors, is improved by map matching.
It is possible to gain some idea of the storage capacity of such a CD if it is compared with typed information on A4 sheets of paper, each sheet carrying 50 lines of 80 characters. Each character is represented by one byte. The CD has room for 600 megabytes — equivalent to 150,000 pages, which would make a pile 15m high.
The digital cartographer is faced with the task of transferring a normal map onto the CD using about 30 colours. Using a grid of horizontal and vertical lines 0.1mm apart the map is divided into tiny squares, each of a specific colour.
The system could also be linked up to the vehicle radio. Current traffic information sources such as local road broadcasts are, inevitably, often incomplete or out of date. While a traffic jam is usually reported, for example, its clearance is not. RDS is able to solve these problems by using detection loops buried in the road surface.
Standardisation of RDS is important if people are to be able to use their navigation system abroad: RDS is undergoing trials in France and Holland. In the long-term satellite navigation will be possible with the help of the American NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS). With 18 satellites in orbit it will become possible within the next decade to determine the position of a vehicle to within 100m.
Marcus Jacobsen asked how often the system could be updated to allow for changes in local conditions. Morement replied that it would not be practical to update more than once a year. The buyer would pay a nominal fee for the updated version.
Because the system can calculate a deviation from a proposed route and then bring the user back to the original route, however, it would not matter too much if a one-way system was suddenly introduced. Jacobsen asked if spurious signals could cause problems. "We have not solved it totally," said Morement, "but it is not necessarily a problem. We try to design to keep interference out — there are standards yet to be defined for the transmission of digital information — but it will take time." He was also asked if the Routemaster system data transmission was yet operational.
"We still have work to do," said Morement, "but we have equipped a small number of vehicles to gain practical experience to find out where further development is needed. Vehicle and electronic indus tries need to get closer together to come to terms with the growing electronic content."
Fred Kay asked: "What market research has been done?" Morement told him: "We are at a crossroads in finding the potential market. If the vehicle is to be fitted with ABS the possibilities are endless — half of our effort is being put into software development. At this time it is a step-by-step approach."
Tony Artiss, group fleet engineer for Tollemache and Cobbold, said he was not interested in gimmicks but wanted to know how much it would cost and how long before it would be introduced. "It could be available as an add-on system by 1990/91 at a cost of about 22,000," said Morement, "but costs will come down if we can integrate this with other systems already fitted to the vehicle."
• FLEET MANAGEMENT KLAUS THEDE • Klaus Thede, sales director of Mannesmann Kienzle, described what he referred to as "Computer-integrated transport" — the use of computers in conjunction with the tachograph for fleet management.
Fuel consumption, he said, could be measured by an accurate meter and recorded on the tachograph chart, and then electronically evaluated by such as the Mannesmann Kienzle chart reading system. "The driver is provided with immediate information about the instantaneous consumption and the average consumption from the beginning of the trip, day or week, and the total quantity of fuel consumed in relation to the distance driven. This allows him to optimise his driving behaviour," said Thede.
"The automatically collected data from the tachograph and/ or sensors in the vehicle can be further complemented by in formation keyed in by the driver," he said.
There were three packages available from Mannesmann Kienzle: the first was a standard data transfer cartridge with an 8K memory and an option of a driver's keypad and driver's log. The second had 8K of inbuilt memory and a hard-wire conneciton instead of a cartridge for data retrieval, and the same options with the additon of a data "key" which could be removed, with 1k of data. The last package had an 8K data key and the same options. This system showed graphic printouts of driving performance, engine speed etc. "The system also shows the fleet manager the most important events which he considers essential and specify which information he wants to be processed," said Thede. "The printout can also show events like loading or unloading times at the customer."
Kienzle had also developed automatic recording of vehicle refuelling, with driver ID cards. To avoid possible misuse, these could have build-in pass codes and recording of the vehicle odometer readings. Automatic vehicle identification by means of an inductive loop was also available, as was automatic odometer reading.
Discussion on Klaus Thede's paper revolved around two major topics: the technical features of tachographs and the fleet information systems relying on them, and the levels of information for driver and operator which the operators wanted from the instrument.
Tom Llewellyn launched a fairly scathing attack on existing tachographs: "The tachograph is probably the most unreliable instrument I've ever had — I don't know of one which has lasted to its twoyear test," he said.
Bill Montague of BTAC pointed out that the amount of information which could be obtained from existing tachograph equipment was "amazing", but John Walter thought it was time for a fundamental change. "I cannot understand why the tachograph, which was designed eons ago, has not been changed. ." to something which would give the information required by law, and to give the driver and the operator the information that they wanted.
Discussing the FMS with a "key" memory by which information could be removed from the vehicle, Basil Gamjee wanted to know how much information could be stored in the key. When Thede replied that it could hold up to eight kilobytes, Marcus Jacobsen wanted to know why not 16KB or more as the technology was available. Thede replied that Kienzle did offer greater memory in the recorders, but that no customers had wanted it.
Fred Kay of Lucas Kienzle pointed out that: "What you don't do is record all of the information, just the significant points," so the memory requirement was not as large as it might be. The 8K memory was sufficient for four weeks' operations, said Thede.
kin Mays of Horley Services asked the crunch question: "I retain a healthy scepticism," he said. "I have 65 vehicles (needing tachographs) and two depots. How much am I going to have to spend?" Fred Kay had the answer: 275-100,000. Thede hastened to claim that such an expenditure could be paid back in one to two years. "For example," he said, "there is a company running in France and Germany carrying liquid food with 80 trucks." That company was using the system to control its pumps and for preventive maintenance as well, and in one year it had had no breakdowns. "He says it was paid for in six months," said Thede.