Site Operation Strategy for Wheel Loader/Truck Loading and Transportation Cycle

The fuel consumption, productivity and operability are three important performance criteria for construction machinery. Better fuel economy sometimes means reduced productivity while higher productivity requires more powerful powertrain and thus consumes more fuel. It is challenging to compromise these performances in a single machine. However for working sites with multiple machines running together, it is possible to balance fleet fuel consumption and productivity with proper site operation strategy. In this study a site operation strategy for wheel loader/truck loading and transportation cycle is developed. A comprehensive criterion balancing the trade-off between fleet fuel consumption and fleet productivity the fleet operating cost, is proposed. The strategy takes both fleet configuration parameter (number of wheel loaders and trucks) and operating parameter (wheel loader cycle time) into considerations. The fleet fuel consumption is calculated based on vehicle powertrain models instead of empirical estimation. The fleet fuel consumption, productivity and fleet operating cost with different numbers of wheel loader/truck and wheel loader cycle times are obtained. The optimal number of wheel loader/truck and wheel loader cycle time to achieve minimum fleet operating cost are identified.