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Driving sustainability at Hägglunds

Hägglunds products, solutions and actions contribute to sustainability in customer operations worldwide, which means our work carries forward in theirs. At the same time, we’re working to improve our business and ourselves – a process with even broader impact. Each positive change drives the next.
Red hydraulic motor with white Hägglunds logo

Sustainability through design

Sustainability is a strong element in creating and improving Hägglunds drive systems. From the beginning, we strive to lengthen the product life cycle. This means making design and material choices that ensure durability by reducing component wear and internal stresses. In addition, we design for ease of service, making it as simple as possible to exchange components when needed.

Such exchanges allow easy upgrading of our modular drive systems, for example to take advantage of our steady improvements in efficiency. Over recent decades, we’ve decreased internal friction and made other efficiency advances in Hägglunds motors. By working to lower the pressure drop and fine-tune the hydraulic channels within each new motor, we continue to reduce energy loss – ensuring more system output for the energy put in.

Our most visible advances, however, come from increasing the power density of our solutions. As our motors and drive units shrink in relation to their output, customers get the power they need with a smaller footprint and even less weight on the shaft. In mobile applications, especially, this can mean smaller, lighter and more energy-efficient machines as a whole.

Red hydraulic Hägglunds motor in industrial application

Sustainability in operation

In operation, there are numerous ways that Hägglunds drive systems can contribute to sustainability. Their reliability is especially important, because unplanned stops in customer processes can lead to material or energy waste. Our efforts to reduce friction, stress and other wear factors prolong not only drive lifetime but also customer uptime. And through drive connectivity, we’re providing new tools to detect issues before they become problems.

In fact, Hägglunds drives can protect against problems in the machines they serve. This is a strong advantage in applications with “shock loads”, where a sudden heavy mass or unexpectedly hard obstacle results in a sudden torque peak. Besides having a low moment of inertia, our drives have a built-in pressure limiting function. The first avoids amplifying the additional torque stress, while the second prevents its transfer to wear-prone machine components like teeth and knives.

Features like shock load protection mean that Hägglunds drives can be sized exactly for the applications they serve, without additional margins to prevent breakage. When there’s no overdimensioning, there are no resulting efficiency losses – which means less energy used in operation.

Dark haired male technician conducting service on hydraulic motor

Sustainability in service

How well and how long a Hägglunds drive system operates are among the major factors that determine its sustainability. Hägglunds drives are engineered for long and problem-free operation, even in harsh environments. But attention throughout the life cycle remains important, so service plays a key role.

Our global service team helps keep drive systems in optimal condition, not only through spare parts and maintenance but also through knowledge support and more advanced services. A good example of the latter is Hägglunds CMp, which uses sensors within the drive system to provide condition monitoring possibilities and deep insights for improving drive use. As a basis for preventive maintenance and optimization, Hägglunds CMp can increase drive reliability and potentially reduce factors like wear or energy consumption.

Because Hägglunds systems are modular, their lifetime can easily be prolonged. Older components can be replaced with new and more efficient ones, and our service team can rescale an entire drive system if the needs change compared to the original dimensioning. This ensures the longest possible system life while keeping utilization high.

Find more information

Download our Sustainability overview