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US 4,988,974 AGranted
Warning and safety system indicating truck trailer tip-over condition
OwnerTommy J. Fury, Gerald D. Baileyinventors
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OwnerTommy J. Fury, Gerald D. Baileyinventors
Estimating the term…
A warning and safety system for tractor-trailer dump trucks to indicate that the raised trailer is in a precarious position and in danger of tipping over, which system measures the pivot angle or the angle of revolution of the front end of the trailer. When the raised trailer is in an unstable position and begins to tip over, the front end of the trailer pivots on the hydraulic telescoping cylinder extending from the fifth wheel of the trailer. Mounted directly onto to hydraulic telescoping cylinder is an instrument sensitive to angular motion, or, alternatively, mounted on the fifth wheel of the tractor is a pivoting canister containing that instrument, from which a cable extends, parallel to the hydraulic telescoping cylinder, to the bottom of the front end of the trailer, where the cable engages with a pulley arrangement securely mounted on the cylinder well of the trailer. When the warning and safety system detects that the tipping angle of the trailer is equal to or greater than predetermined, but adjustable, critical angles, various first stage and second stage alarms are triggered. The first stage alarms may comprise audio and visual alarms, whereas the second stage alarms automatically dump the oil from the hydraulic telescoping cylinder back into the oil reserve tank and immediately lower the trailer. The location of the pivoting canister on the fifth wheel prevents spurious false alarms, as does the time-delayed dampened instrumentation within the canister. Power is supplied automatically to the warning and safety system either by using a pressure-sensitive switch which turns on the system as soon as the trailer is raised a small distance, or by wiring a switch into the gate-release switch.
In a tractor-trailed truck, including a trailer capable of being raised by a hydraulic cylinder mounted between the front end of said trailer and the fifth wheel of said trailer, means for detecting the side-to-side or tip rotation of the front end of said trailer about the connection between said hydraulic cylinder and said fifth wheel, said detecting means including tip angle measuring means mounted adjacent to said fifth wheel, and means connecting said tip angle measuring means with one of said front end of said trailer or said hydraulic cylinder adjacent said front end of said trailer, said connecting means moving though substantially the same angle as said front end of said trailer, when said front end of said trailer undergoes tip rotation, to thereby proportionally rotate said tip angle measuring means.
In a tractor-trailer dump truck having a trailer with an extendible cylinder connected between a fifth wheel on said trailer and the front end of said trailer for lifting said front end of said trailer, a method of preventing damage to said trailer when said trailer is raised to dump materials and said tractor-trailer dump truck is an unstable condition and said trailer may tip over, said method comprising the steps of:
In a trailer dump truck having a tractor and a trailer with a fifth plate, said trailer capable of being raised by a hydraulic telescoping cylinder, said hydraulic cylinder being coupled to said fifth plate and coupled to the front end of said trailer, comprising in combination:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.