WO1995025849A1

WO1995025849A1 - Cleaning apparatus for a road, an airfield or the like

Info

Publication number: WO1995025849A1
Application number: PCT/FI1994/000103
Authority: WO
Inventors: Markku Hokkanen; Erkki Tienaho; Jukka Virtanen
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 1992-09-23
Filing date: 1994-03-21
Publication date: 1995-09-28
Anticipated expiration: 1996-09-21
Also published as: FI924250A0; FI94978C; FI94978B; FI924250L

Abstract

An equipment for clearing of a road, an airfield, or equivalent, which equipment comprises a push trough (4), a rotary brush device (6), and a blow and/or suction device (9), which devices are placed one after the other as mounted on a common frame and which devices extend substantially across the entire working width of the equipment. Said devices are placed so that their longitudinal axis is placed perpendicular to the running direction of the device. In view of intensifying the shifting of the material to be cleared, such as snow, to the side and, thus, in view of increasing the efficiency of clearing, the push trough (4) is provided with an efficient transverse conveyor (5), which also carries out the shifting to the side of the snow that is detached by the rotary brush.

Description

Cleaning apparatus for a road, an airfield or the like.

The invention concerns a clearing equipment for a road, airfield or equivalent. The equipment consists of a push trough, a brush device, and a blow and/or suction device, which are placed one after the other and whose longitudinal axes are placed substantially perpendicular to the running direction of the equipment, and in connec- tion with the push trough, a transverse conveyor is placed, which extends across the entire width of said trough.

At present, for example, brush blowers hauled by a vehicle are in use, a device of said type being described, for example, in the FI Patent 44,633. It is a drawback of these devices that are hauled that the wheels of the hauling vehicle pack the snow that remains underneath the wheels tightly onto the base to be cleaned, the brush- blower combination that runs after the vehicle being unable to detach the packed snow from the base. In view of elimination of said drawback, devices have been developed in which, in front of the vehicle that produces the travel movement, either a ploughing push plate alone is placed, as is the case in the FI Patent 74,504 and FI Pat. Appl. 811534, or a combination of a push plate and a rotary brush device is placed, which is the case in the FI Pat. Appl. 902577.

There are also clearing devices in use in which, in order to obtain a good clearing result, in the same device, a push plate, a rotary brush device, and a blow device that carries out the finishing-cleaning are placed one after the other, as is described in the FI Pat. Appl. 811534. By means of a device accomplished in this way, a reasonably good cleaning result is achieved, but its effective working width must be made rather little, because, when higher running speeds are aimed at, the shifting of snow to the side does not take place with sufficient efficiency, neither by the push plate nor by the brush device. In both cases, the force that shifts the snow to the side is produced by mounting the central axis of said device (push plate, rotary brush) in an inclined position in relation to the clearing vehicle. If attempts are made to increase the force that shifts the snow to the side by turning the push plate and the rotary brush to a larger angle, some of the effective working width is lost. A second limiting factor in an increase in the angle, especially at high running speeds or with large quantities of snow, is the lateral friction of the wheels of the clearing vehicle, which is then not sufficient for maintaining the correct running direction.

In order to intensify the shifting of snow to the side, in some ploughing devices that comprise a push plate alone, a conveyor screw has been fitted in connection with the push plate, as comes out from the FI Pat. Appl. 843150 and FI Patent 85,297. The efficiency of such a conveyor is, however, not sufficient when a large working width and high efficiency are aimed at, above all because of the open construction of the trough (push plate) that surrounds the conveyor screw. The barely satisfactory operation of these devices is based on a joint effect of the inclined position of the push plate and the conveyor screw.

In these conveyor screw applications, the central axis of the conveyor trough is mounted in a position inclined in relation to the horizontal plane, so that the snow to be shifted to the side must rise "uphill", which again hampers its movement to the side. The resistance becomes higher when a larger working width is aimed at, and large working widths are not possible at all.

The capacity of shifting the snow to the side of the rotary brushes, which are used to improve the cleaning result after the push plate, is particularly poor, and said conveyor screw does not give any contribution to that. Thus, the cleaning brushes currently in use do not permit a significant increase in the working width and/or in the working speed.

As regards the cleaning by blowing, said devices have involved a high requirement of power for the blowing as compared with the blowing produced by said power and applied to the face of the airfield and with the cleaning effect of said blowing. In this respect, in some devices that are based on blowing alone, attempts have been made to provide an improvement by carrying out the blowing through a nozzle against the face of the airfield out of a closed space across the entire width of a distributor pipe, as is described in the FI Pat. Appl. 793753. A joint effect of blow and suction action has also been utilized, as comes out from the publications CH-496,856 and CH- 338,482. The cleaning effect produced by a blowing and/or suction effect alone, however, remains very little.

By means of the equipment in accordance with the present invention, a decisive improvement is provided in respect of the drawbacks mentioned above. In view of achieving this, the equipment in accordance with the invention is characterized in what is stated in the characterizing part of claim 1. The most important advantage of the invention can be considered to be the high working capacity and the good brushing result obtained by means of the device, in particular in clearing of snow. This is mainly because of the efficient transverse conveyor, which permits a large working width as it serves both for the push trough and for the cleaning brush in the transverse shifting of snow. When this unit is still combined with an efficient blow- cleaning provided with a collector chamber, in particular the high quality require- ments of airfields in respect of cleaning can be met clearly better than by means of the prior-art equipments.

In the following, the invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Figure 1 is a side view of the equipment as a whole, being a vertical sectional view in respect of the clearing equipment itself.

Figure 2 is a schematic vertical sectional side view of the clearing device.

Figure 3 is a schematic horizontal sectional view of the same clearing device viewed from the top. According to Fig. 1, the clearing equipment 1 itself is accomplished so that, for moving and steering the equipment on the face to be cleared, a separate vehicle pushing from behind (shovel loader, lorry, etc.) is needed, which vehicle is denoted with the reference numeral 2.

At the front edge of the clearing device 1, there is a lip 3, along which the snow rises into the trough 4, whose longitudinal axis is horizontal and perpendicular to the running direction of the device. In the trough 4, a conveyor 5 moves as parallel to the trough 4, which conveyor transfers the snow, entering into the trough 4 over the lip 3, in the lateral direction to the discharge end of the conveyor 5, which end can be changed by reversing the sense of rotation of the conveyor. The discharge of snow from the end of the trough can take place freely, in which case a ploughing ridge remains at the side of the clearing device 1 , or by blowing the snow further away from the device by means of prior-art procedures.

For removal of any snow that has passed under the lip 3, the device is provided with a brush 6, which is adjustable in the vertical direction, which revolves against the running direction and is mounted as perpendicular to said running direction, and which brush 6 brushes the snow over a lip 7 into the rear trough 8 of the conveyor 5, in which trough the conveyor member 5 that performs the return movement carries the snow in the lateral direction. Owing to the little amount, this snow can be circulated through the forward trough to the discharge end. By means of a conveyor, the shifting of the snow detached by the brush to the side can be made substantially more efficient than in the prior-art solutions.

Further, the equipment includes a blower equipment 9 in itself known, by whose means the work is finished. The blower equipment 9 is preferably accomplished so that air is blown out of a chamber 9a through a slot 9b that extends across the entire working width of the device 1 against the face to be cleaned, from which the air, together with the snow that it has detached with it, flows, as a result of the shape of the flow duct, into a collector chamber 9c. The chamber 9c may also communicate with the suction side of the blower (not shown) that pressurizes the chamber 9a. Then, the snow that enters into the chamber 9c is separated from the air by means of a cyclone effect, being passed to the side of the clearing device 1 through the open end of the chamber 9c.

Each actuator of the clearing device 1, i.e. the conveyor 5, the rotary brush 6, the blower unit 9, are in such a way independent that, irrespective of the others, they can be switched on or off as required, even though, as a rule, said devices are operated at the same time.

Said actuators receive their operating power preferably from a joint power machine 10, which rotates the hydraulic pump 11 connected with same, the hydraulic motors of the different actuators being again connected to the hydraulic pump by means of pipe systems and necessary control devices.

The clearing device 1 is in partial glide contact with the base to be cleared. This is advantageous, for example, in respect of the forward lip 3. In the other respects, the device is supported on wheels (not shown), which are preferably provided with height adjustment in order to guarantee a good clearing result in different conditions of snow and on different bases to be cleared.

In view of attaching the clearing device 1 to the pushing vehicle quickly and reliably, its rear part is provided with standardized attachments (not shown). In order to blow away the ploughing ridge produced by the clearing device 1 at its side, at the rear side of the discharge points of the conveyor 5, standardized attachments can also be fitted so as to mount a rotary snow-plough unit in itself known, by whose means the ploughing ridge is disintegrated and spread aside immediately.

It should be noticed in particular that the actuator that is most essential in view of •the efficiency of the device in accordance with the invention, i.e. the transverse conveyor 5, can also be carried into effect in a way different from the lamellar conveyor described above. The conveyor can also be some other mechanical conveyor, or alternatively it can be a pneumatic conveyor. Also in the other respects, it should be stated that, above, the invention has been described with reference to one preferred exemplifying embodi¬ ment of same only. This is, however, by no means supposed to restrict the invention to this particular embodiment alone, but many variations are possible within the scope of the inventive idea defined in the following patent claims.

Claims

1. A clearing equipment (1) for a road, airfield or equivalent, which equipment consists of a push trough (4), a brush device (6), and of a blow and/or suction device (6), which devices are placed one after the other and extend substantially across the entire working width of the equipment and which devices are placed so that their longitudinal axes are placed substantially perpendicular to the running direction of the equipment (1), and in connection with the push trough (4), a transverse conveyor is placed (5), which extends across the entire width of said trough (4), characterized in that the transverse conveyor (5) is also operationally connected with the brush device (6).

2. A device as claimed in claim 1, characterized in that the transverse conveyor (5) is provided with a drive gear of its own.

3. A device as claimed in any of the preceding claims, characterized in that the transverse conveyor (5) is mechanical.

4. A device as claimed in claim 3, characterized in that the transverse conveyor (5) is a lamellar conveyor.

5. A device as claimed in any of the claims 1 to 2, characterized in that the transverse conveyor (5) is pneumatic.

6. A device as claimed in any of the preceding claims, characterized in that the push trough (4), the brush device (6), and the blow and/or suction device (9), which are included in the clearing equipment (1), are mounted on a common frame directly one after the other.