Light Commercial Vehicle with Locking Differential

Giovanni Giordani; Celso Fratta

doi:10.4271/2013-36-0467

In the light commercial vehicles and other wheeled vehicles, an open differential is a device that allows each driven wheel to rotate in different speeds during a curve or in limited grip conditions.

On the other hand, when one of the wheels loses the grip the differential will direct all the torque available to the wheel that is spinning making the vehicle get stuck. In certain applications, such as electrical power line maintenance in rural areas requires a larger capacity drive vehicles due to low friction terrain.

To comply with this application requirement was developed the locking differential speed sensitive that pulls both wheels at the same time offering full locking axle and increasing the traction capacity of the vehicle. The system automatically unlocks the wheel with higher speed when the speed is different between them as happened in a curve.

For this project the locking system was applied to a light truck, which is an innovation in the light commercial vehicles Brazilian market. Among the advantages of this product is the low cost of implementation and maintenance, especially compared with 4×4 traction vehicles.

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Light Commercial Vehicle with Locking Differential 2013-36-0467

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