低衝撃台車のための車輪キャスターの研究

概要

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A large number of wheeled casters have been used around the world so that we can push wagons easily. These days, the specifications of casters tend to become severe to keep the wagon vibration lower. Especially, it is very important for patients, medicines and small precision parts to be carried softly and stably. On the other hand, the good design of wheeled casters depends on skills of the engineers who have produced them for years, and the details of the good design are not clarified. In this paper, the mechanics of the wagon caster is discussed to obtain the better design standards. First, we focus on the center of percussion of the wheeled caster to reduce the impulsive force to the wagon. Next, the two-dimensional dynamical model of the wagon is derived to study the reduction effect dependent on the center of percussion. Then, the experimental results are minutely compared to the simulation results using the derived model. From these results, it is clarified that the position of the center of percussion on the caster achieves the reduction of the impulsive force to the wagon when the wagon wheel runs over small bumps. The simulation results based on the dynamical modeling are also verified to have good agreements with experimental results.