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Abstracto

Design and development of steering mechanism for hydraulically driven firefighting trailer

Prashant Umbarkar and Prashant S. Kadu

Firefighting is the act of extinguishing destructive fires. Hydraulic fire fighting trailers are specially designed trailers equipped with modern firefighting equipments used in fire fighting. In general practice fire fighting is done with the help of traditional water gun or nozzle which is controlled by manually by fire fighters. For fire coming under low temperature range, extinguishing is easy because water monitor can be taken closer to the fire source, but in case of destructive fire, a heat zone is created around the heat source. The temperature of this heat zone is very high and hence fire fighters cannot enter the heat zone. In such cases the act of firefighting is done from a distance. if the act of fire extinguishing is done from a distance with the help of water gun only 20-30% of water reaches the source as a major part of it evaporates due to high temperature. In such condition a remote operated vehicle is required which can easily enter the heat zone and extinguish the fire. The only limitation of these kind of trailers is that, we cannot use Electric motors, batteries because of chances of explosion or melting of the other circuitry. To eliminate this problem a hydraulic fire fighting trailer was developed by Mr. Amit Bhende under the guidance of Prof. Prashant.S Kadu. Using the properties of hose pipe such as straightening, elongation and buckling a hydraulically driven vehicle was fabricated which can easily enter the heat zone without human assistance. The trailer travels with the help of hydraulic pressure developed by the firefighting pump. As the flow of water is continuous within the hose pipe, it can easily bear the high temperature of the heat zone.