PORTABLE TRUCK TEST BEAM

• Railquip is proud to introduce the Portable Truck Test Beam.
• The Portable Test Beam with Stand is made of carbon steel and primed with one coat of finish paint.
• Color: Safety Yellow

Technical DataOperating Pressure:10, 000 psi maxHydraulic Hose10 Feet Power Hose Quick ConnectorWheelsequipped with wheel stopWeighApprox: 1,100 lbsLength96″Width29″Heigth53″

Truck test beam

Truck Test Beam

Your engineer or certifier is most likely to conduct torsion or beam tests when you install radical modifications. In essence, these tests are only meant to assess how strong your truck/new vehicle is and how suitable it is to carry out the tasks ahead.

Normally, torsion and beaming test requirements tend to vary with jurisdictions,  with each state trying to interpret the National Code of Practice for the Modification of Light Vehicles differently.

You may need to conduct beaming and torsion tests in different scenarios. Here are the circumstances where such tests will be inevitable in real-life scenarios:

• When your vehicle’s chassis has undergone modifications to accommodate new rear-wheel tubs
• When the floor plan of the unitarily constructed vehicle is zipped out to pave the way for a revised fabricated chassis
• When the chassis or the front sub-frame has undergone modifications to accommodate new rear-wheel tubs
• When a convertible has been re-created from a  sedan by removing the roof
• A  car is built from the ground up
• When building an extended limo

Truck test beam methods

Scientific advancements have led to the establishment of an array of truck beam test methods. In essence, these methods are meant to measure the strength of the rigid pavement load transfer and the flexible pavement structure associated with a truck.

Here’s an analysis of truck test beam methods:

The Benkelman beam

The Benkelman Beam was advanced in 1952 by the Western Association of State Highway Organizations (WASHO).

In essence, the Benkelman Beam is distinguished as a simple device that

the rebound deflection associated with a flexible pavement.

Practical applications of the Benkelman Beam involve using a loaded truck (weighing about 8 tons) mounted on a single axle. The measurements conducted on the Benkelman Beam are initiated by attaching the beam’s tip between the dual tires and then measuring the rebound pavement surface while the truck is moved away.

A typical Benkelman Beam will come with a mechanical Dial Gauge to measure the associated peak deflections.

Some companies have gone the extra mile to advance an electronic kit

attached to their Benkelman Beams to capture deflection bowls with

great accuracy and ease.

Falling weight deflectometer (FWD) machine

The FWD machine is meant to drop the known weight of a pavement surface from a specified height.

The FWD machine comes with an attached row of geophone sensors attached on the pavement’s surface. In essence, the geophones are meant to measure the speed (velocity) of the ground waves that emerge due to the impact of the falling weight.

Back calculations are made by considering the speed to evaluate the deflections caused by the pavement surface. From the back calculations, the information concerning the strength of your truck’s pavement is derived.

Stationary laser profiler

A stationary laser profiler (SLP) is a very useful device in measuring the surface micro-texture of a truck’s pavement. The device uses a rigid beam (usually 1.67 meters long) to hold the carriage. Similarly, the carriage is mounted with a Selcom Optocar Laser Displacement Module.

Traverse profile beam

The traverse laser beam comes in handy any moment you want to measure the rut depth.

Remember, rut depth is the primary determinant of the strength of your truck’s pavement. In essence, the carriage of the traverse profile beam has a carriage that moves freely along the contour of the pavement surface.  The data derived from each encoder is captured in a microprocessor then read through a portable computer running a Labview program.