Truck floor

Refrigerated trucks are used for transportation of fresh food products. The traditional structural design of the floor consists of a number of wooden beams traversing the truck with plywood and glass fiber plates below and on top. The thermal insulation is obtained by filling the cavities between the plates and stiffeners with polyurethane foam. The design is much like a sandwich, but the polyurethane cannot replace the stiffeners because it is not sufficiently strong.

The Dow Chemical Company manufactures a foam product called StyrofoamŪ that does have the necessary strength to allow the stiffeners to be removed. But it requires careful dimensioning of the skin layers.

The two principal load cases are

  • an evenly distributed pressure over the floor from the payload

  • a large force on a relatively small section of the floor from a fork lift operating inside the truck during loading and unloading.

The latter is the worst. A sandwich does not handle concentrated loads well, but careful design of the skin layers makes it possible to avoid pressure fatigue in the foam.

The Dow Chemical Company and Rational Engineering offer a program to help truck manufacturers to save weight, material, and labor costs by taking full advantage of the sandwich properties of the structure.

For more information, please contact Philippe Valette, Dow Benelux.

*Styrofoam is a trademark of the Dow Chemical Company.
 
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Last modified: november 15, 2001