Fifth Wheel Hitch Seat Geometry for Easier Kingpin Alignment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing fifth wheel hitches face challenges with difficult connection alignment, requiring multiple attempts and often a second person's assistance, and suffer from increased stress and wear due to rotational and vertical loads through ball and socket joints.
Innovation Solution
A fifth wheel hitch design featuring a kingpin adapter that allows rotational and translational movement, with a pyramidal shape that mates with a seat for easy alignment, and a compressible pad for flexibility, reducing stress and wear.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a ball and socket adapter is used to convert the kingpin connection, then connection flexibility is improved, but stress and wear on the kingpin increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a kingpin adapter as an intermediary component between the kingpin and the fifth wheel base. This adapter features a pyramidal interface that mates with a corresponding pyramidal seat, allowing rotational and translational movement while distributing loads more evenly. The adapter acts as a mediator that provides connection flexibility without concentrating stress at a single ball-and-socket contact point, thereby reducing wear on the kingpin while maintaining adaptability.
2Strength
If traditional fifth wheel hitches are used, then structural strength is maintained, but connection alignment becomes difficult and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs asymmetric pyramidal interfaces for the kingpin adapter and seat, where the pyramidal shape provides inherent alignment guidance. The asymmetric geometry allows the components to self-align during connection, eliminating the need for precise manual alignment in both longitudinal and transverse directions. This maintains structural strength through the pyramidal interface while dramatically improving ease of operation.
3Reliability
If the kingpin adapter is rigidly fixed to the kingpin, then connection security is improved, but stress concentration increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent designs the kingpin adapter with dynamic characteristics, allowing it to rotate and translate relative to the kingpin within controlled limits. This dynamic capability enables the adapter to absorb and distribute stresses rather than rigidly transmitting them, reducing stress concentration while maintaining connection security through the pyramidal interface geometry and attachment mechanism.
Data Source
AI summary
A fifth wheel hitch has a base attachable to a towing vehicle, a seat attachable at a selected elevation above the base, and a kingpin adapter attachable to a kingpin of a trailer so as to permit rotation of the kingpin adapter relative to the kingpin about a kingpin rotation axis. The seat has a mouth which narrows in the longitudinal direction, such as by having a pyramidal shape. A bottom of the kingpin adapter has a shape which can cause both pivoting rotation of the kingpin adapter relative to the kingpin and longitudinal or transverse translational movement of the kingpin adapter and attached kingpin when the towing vehicle is driven to a position with the seat under the bottom of the kingpin adapter and the kingpin is jacked down so the kingpin adapter seats into the seat.