FIELD OF THE INVENTION
Disclosed herein is an overload prevention system in vehicles. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Nowadays we can see most of the vehicles running in overloaded condition and causing accidents. Overloading decreases the stability of the vehicle and makes it tough for the driver to control the vehicle in different road conditions. Overloading causes excessive wear and tear of automobile components like bearings, suspension systems, gearbox, engine, tire, brake shoes etc. Overloading also decreases the braking efficiency as the braking distance is increased. Overloading also causes damages to road and it obstruct the traffic due to the difficulty in handling such vehicles. Overloading increases fuel consumption of the vehicle. These all are some of the effects caused due to overloading in vehicles.
The Overload Prevention system (OPS) is used to limit the load capacity of a vehicle to the manufactures parameters. The OPS unit starts to check the load on the vehicle in 1 second time gap as soon as the ignition key is turned on. If the load on the vehicle is found more than that of the load specified by the manufacturer continuously for the specified time, the control unit actuates a relay which is connected in series to the ignition circuit and the ignition circuit becomes open and thus the vehicle turns off.
Thus, the Overload Prevention System creates a strong barrier against the overloading practices. These days we can see vehicles like lorry, trailers, trucks, two-wheelers run through our roads with twice as there loading capacity. When the load on the vehicle increases beyond the manufactures parameters the stability and safety features like braking efficiency, handling decreases.
The importance of Overload Prevention System came into existence due to the increase in the road accidents due to overloading. Overload Prevention System (OPS) cuts the ignition whenever a vehicle is loaded beyond its capacity. The Overload Prevention System (OPS) measures the load on the vehicle with the help of a linear potentiometer which move (expansion and contraction) with the suspension system of the-vehicle.
The vehicle will be less stable, difficult to steer and take longer distance to stop. Vehicles
react differently when the maximum weights which ttiey are designed to carry are exceeded.
Overloaded vehicles can cause its tires to overheat and wear rapidly which increases the chance of
premature, dangerous and expensive failure or blow-outs. The driver's control and operating space
in the overloaded vehicle is diminished, escalating the chances for an accident. i . 6

The overloaded vehicle cannot accelerate as normal - making it difficult to overtake. At night, the headlights of an overloaded vehicle will tilt up, blinding oncoming drivers to possible debris or obstructions on the roadway. Brakes have to work harder due to 'the riding of brakes' and because the vehicle is heavier due to overloading. Brakes overheat and lose their effectiveness to stop the vehicle. With overloading, seat belts are often not used as the aim is to pack in as many persons as possible into the vehicle. The whole suspension system comes under stress and, over time, the weakest point can give way. By overloading your vehicle, you will incur higher maintenance costs to the vehicle -tires, brakes, shock absorbers and higher fuel consumption. Insurance cover on overloaded vehicles may be void as overloading is illegal.
PRIOR ART- EXISTING METHODS OF LOAD CALCULATION IN VEHICLES.
Weigh Bridges
There are certain methods used to calculate the load on the vehicle and enforce the rules against overloading practices in heavy goods vehicles. Thus, is done witi help of government approved weigh bridges which are randomly found. In this case the enforcement squad has to do patrolling on roads and check the suspected vehicles for overload.
Analysis of Overloading Prevention System in Trucks
Raj Reddy (Asst. Prof. Department of Mechanical Engineering, BKIT Bhalki, Karnataka, INDIA) came with a system which measures the weight on the loading deck of trucks/mini trucks.
Overloading on the trolley of the vehicle will trigger the micro-switch to indicate the overloading on the dash board and also trigger the buzzer so that he driver can control the overloading during loading itself. The enforcing authority vehicle or the check post or the police station is having the radio frequency transmitter which is received by the overloaded vehicle when it passes near by the enforcing authority which triggers the control circuit to put on the siren witliin the vehicle.
Study On Vehicle- Overloading Control Systems
ShanzhenXUa, Qian ZHAOa (Faculty of Transportation Engineering, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, Huai'an, 223003, China) came with a method which measure the load on the deck using piezoelectric sensors to detect the vehicle-load and then control the fuel injection system of the vehicle.
The system software was designed in assembly language based on AT89C5I microcontroller. Its function is to determine whether a passenger was on the bus or off the bus according to the sequence of low.signals received from the sensors of. When the passenger number

in accumulator was more than rated number, the engine was controlled to stop fuel injection, so that the engine cannot start.
POSSIBLE METHODS OF WEIGHT CALCULATION
Load cells
Strain gauge load cells work on the principle that the strain gauge (a planar resistor) deforms when the material of the load cells deforms appropriately. The gauges themselves are bonded onto a beam or structural member that deforms when weight is applied.
Force Sensor
The Force sensor acts as a force sensing resistor in an electrical circuit. When the force sensor is unloaded, its resistance is very high. When a force is applied to the sensor, this resistance decreases.
Spring Deflection
Load is the amount of force generated by a spring at a specific distance traveled. Spring rate is the amount offeree it'll take the spring to deflect a certain amount of distance traveled. To calculate the amount of deflection achieved under a certain load is calculated by dividing the required load by the spring rate.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An aspect of the present invention is to address at least the above-mentioned problems and/or disadvantages and to provide at least the advantages described below. The following presents a simplified summary of the specification in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the specification. This summary is not an extensive overview of the specification. It is intended to neither identify key or critical elements of the specification nor delineate the scope of the specification. Its sole purpose is to present some concepts of the specification in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description presented later. Following are the objectives of the invention:
The principal object of the present invention is to design and fabricate a scalable low-cost solution to cut off ignition of a 2 wheeled vehicle when it is overloaded.
The following description and the annexed drawings set forth certain illustrative aspects of the specification.
These aspects are indicative, however, of but a few of the various ways in which the principles of the specification may be employed. Other advantages and novel features of the

specification will become apparent from the following detailed description of the specification when considered in conjunction with the drawings.
Other systems, methods, and/or devices according to the exemplary embodiments will be or become apparent to one with skill in the art upon review of the following drawings and detailed description. It is intended that all such additional systems, methods, and/or devices be included within this description, be within the scope of the exemplary embodiments, and be protected by the accompanying claims.
The objectives of the invention will become apparent after consideration of the following description of the invention and its preferred embodiments detailed hereinafter.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
The following description with reference to the accompanying drawings is provided to assist in a comprehensive understanding of exemplary embodiments of the invention as defined by the claims and their equivalents. It includes various specific details to assist in that understanding but these are to be regarded as merely exemplary. Accordingly, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that various changes and modifications of the embodiments described herein can be made without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention. In addition, descriptions of well-known functions and constructions are omitted for clarity and conciseness.
The terms and words used in the following description and claims are not limited to the bibliographical meanings, but, are merely used by the inventor to enable a clear and consistent understanding of the invention. Accordingly, it should be apparent to those skilled in the art that the following description of exemplary embodiments of the present invention are provided for illustration purpose only and not for the purpose of limiting the invention as defined by the appended claims and their equivalents.
It is to be understood that the singular forms "a," "an," and "the" include plural referents unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. Thus, for example, reference to "a component surface" includes reference to one or more of such surfaces.
Figs. 1 discussed below, and the various embodiments used to describe the principles of the present disclosure in this patent document are by way of illustration only and should not be construed in any way that would limit the scope of the disclosure. Those skilled in the art will understand that the principles of the present disclosure may be implemented in any suitably

arranged communications system. The terms used to describe various embodiments are exemplary. It should be understood that these are provided to merely aid the understanding of the description, and that their use and definitions in no way limit the scope of the invention. Terms first, second, and the like are used to differentiate between objects having the same terminology and are in no way intended to represent a chronological order, unless where explicitly stated otherwise. A set is defined as a non-empty set including at least one element.
An aspect of the present invention is to address at least the above-mentioned problems and/or disadvantages and to provide at least the advantages described below. The objects and many attendant advantages of the invention will be more readily appreciated as the same becomes better understood by reference to the following detailed description which is to be considered in connection with the accompanying drawings wherein like reference symbols designate like parts throughout the figures thereof.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING ALONG WITH DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFFRED EMBODIMENTS
Brief description of drawings as well as further features and advantages of this method and apparatus according to the invention, will be clearer with the description of some of its pattern realizations that follow, made to illustrate but limit, with reference to the annexed drawings, in which, the load on the suspension is detected using the relation between spring constant, load acting on it and the deflection length.
FORCE ACTING ON THE SUSPENSION T= kx
=> DEFLECTION, x = (-F) -^ k
WHERE:
• '7" is the force applied to the spring in Newton (n).
• 'k5 is the spring constant measured in Newton per meter (n/m).
• V is the distance the spring is compressed or stretched from its equilibrium position in
meters (m).
The deflection of suspension (deflection from normal position) was measured by adding 10kg masses at rider and pillion seats as shown in Figure-1 TABLE.

a) It was observed that there was a deflection of 38.5mm at the rear suspension system when a weight of 180kgs was on the bike.
b) It was also observed that a very negligible deflection occurred in the front suspension system.
Overload Prevention System is equipment which limits the load capacity of a vehicle to the manufactures parameters. Whenever a vehicle is loaded beyond its capacity, the control unit makes the ignition circuit open and thus the vehicle's engine turns off.
The Overload Prevention System uses a linear potentiometer, Arduino Uno programmable board, N C Relay. The Linear potentiometer measures the deflection of the suspension unit and checks weather the load is above that of the maximum load as per die manufactures parameter. We know that load on the spring is the product of spring constant and deflection of the spring. The linear potentiometer measures the displacement of the suspension unit and a corresponding analog signal is send to the control unit.
The signal from the linear potentiometer is processed by the control unit and it find out whether it is in overload condition or not. If the vehicle is found in overloaded condition for a specific time period the relay opens the ignition circuit. COMPONENTS OF OPS
Arduino UNO r 3 Linear potentiometer (100K) NC Relay (5V) ARDUINO UNO r 3
The Arduino Uno R3 is a microcontroller board based on a removable, dual-inline-package (DIP) ATmega328 AVR microcontroller. It has 20 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs and 6 can be used as analog inputs). Programs can be loaded on to it from the easy-to-use Arduino computer program. The Arduino has an extensive support community, which makes it a very easy way to get started working with embedded electronics. The R3 is the third, and latest, revision of the Arduino Uno. LINEAR POTENTIOMETER
A linear potentiometer is a three-terminal resistor with a sliding contact that forms an
adjustable voltage divider. If only two terminals are used, one end and the wiper, it acts as a
variable resistor or rheostat. The measuring instrument called a potentiometer is essentially a
voltage divider used for measuring electric potential (voltage); the component is an
implementation of the same principle, hence its name. .

Linear potentiometers are commonly used to control electrical devices such as volume controls on audio equipment. Linear potentiometers can be used as position transducers, for example, in a joystick. Potentiometers are rarely used to directly control significant power (more than a watt), since the power dissipated in the potentiometer would be comparable to the power in the controlled load.
RELAY
A relay is an electromagnetic switch operated by a relatively small electric current that can turn on or off a much larger electric current. The heart of a relay is an electromagnet (a coil of wire that becomes a temporary magnet when electricity flows through it).
Normally closed (NC) contacts disconnect the circuit when the relay is activated; the circuit is connected when the relay is inactive. It stays in normally closed condition.
WORKING OF OPS
The OPS work according to the command from the control unit. The control unit includes a looped program. When the linear potentiometer moves it produces an analog value corresponding to the displacement occurred.
We have a preset analog value (threshold value) corresponding to the distance moved by the suspension unit at the time of load as specified by the manufactures. Whenever the analog value from the potentiometer crosses the threshold value the control unit checks weather the analog value is more than the tiireshold value for the next 5 seconds. If the analog value is found above the threshold value for this time period, the control unit turns the engine off.
The control unit actuates a normally closed relay which makes the ignition circuit open by restricting the current flow before reaching the ignition coil. The relay is connected in series in the ignition circuit between the ignition coil and CD1 unit.
When this circuit is open, no more current is received by die ignition coil from the CDI unit.
In the absence of current from CDI unit, the engine will stop. (The time period of 5 seconds was chosen considering the normal road condition which may have potholes, speed breakers, dips etc.
The program logic of ops control module is explained in figure no.2
Following is the Arduino Program
int a=0,1 = 0;
int v, start;
char n='0'; . ,

void setup ()
{
Serial.begin(9600); pinMode (AO, INPUT); pinMode (9, OUTPUT); pinMode (8, OUTPUT); digitalWrite (9,0);
} void loop ()
{
intpotValue = analogRead(AO); Serial.println(potValue); if(potValue>950)
{ Serial.print("insde 1");
start=millis()/1000; while(l)
{
if(analogRead(A0)<950)
break;
a=mi]lis()/1000-start; Serial.print("a:"); Serial.println(a);
if(a=14)
{ digital Write(9,l); digital Write(8,l);
}
} } }

FUTURE SCOPE
The OPS system can be developed by including a gradient detecting system, so that OPS work more efficiently in uneven terrain conditions.
• The deflection readings from the front suspension system of 2 wheelers along with
the rear suspension deflections can contribute towards more efficient working of OPS in 2 wheeled
vehicles.
• The OPS can be easily implemented in commercial vehicles in a very lower cost.
With an addition of a GSM module to the OPS, the overloaded vehicle can be easily
identified by the concerned authorities.
Benefits of the Overloading prevention system
Overloading prevention system is a useful tool to contribute towards more compliance with mass regulation. It could help to reduce the number of overloaded vehicles and contributed to the more efficient and effective use of police officer's time.
A reduction in overloaded vehicles is also conducive to a reduction in crashes. There are still issues and challenges for this technology and application which require more research and development work. New applications of these systems are expected both for traffic and vehicle regulation enforcement.
The above description of a basic design is able to show the invention from the conceptive point of view, in a way that others, by using the art, can easily modify and/or adapt in different applications this specific design without further research and without going apart from the invention concept, and therefore it is intended that these adaptations and transformations will be considered as equivalent to this specific realization. The means and materials to make the many described functions can be various in natures without exiting the area of the invention. It is intended that the expressions or the terminology used have a simple descriptive aim and therefore not limiting.
While a preferred embodiment of the present invention has been described hereinabove, it is intended that all matter contained in the above description and shown in the accompanying drawings be interpreted as illustrative and not in a limiting sense and that all modifications, constructions and arrangements which fall within the scope and spirit of the invention may be made.

I Claim,
1. A system and method of an overload prevention system in vehicles wherein the load on the suspension is detected using the relation between springs constant, load acting on it and the deflection length.
2. The system and method as claimed in claim 1 comprising a. Linear potentiometer,
a. Microcontroller programmable board, And a. Normally closed Relay.
3. The system and method as claimed in claim 1 characterized by a Linear potentiometer measures the deflection of the suspension unit and checks weather the load is above that of the maximum load as per the manufactures parameter; the linear potentiometer measures the displacement of the suspension unit and a corresponding analog signal is send to the control unit. x
4. The system and method as claimed in claim 1 characterized by a signal from the linear potentiometer which is processed by the control unit to find out whether it is in overload condition or not and If the vehicle is found in overloaded condition for a specific time period the relay opens the ignition circuit.