Abstract
Cable tensile forces in winch-assist harvesting have been investigated in order to assess the safety concerns of the technology. However, the literature is lacking, particularly in regards to the impact of winch design. In this study, a Summit Winch Assist tethering a feller-director on ground slopes up to 77% was monitored for four days. The cable tensile forces were simultaneously recorded at the harvesting and anchor machine at a frequency of 100 Hz. Cameras and GNSS devices enabled a time study of the operations and the recording of machine positions. Winch functionality and design were disclosed by the manufacturer and used for the interpretation of the results. The cable tensile forces reached 296 kN at the harvesting machine and 260 kN at the anchor machine. The slow negotiation of obstacles while moving downhill recorded the highest peaks, mainly due to threshold settings of the winch in the brake system activation. Lower but significant peaks were also recorded during stationary work tasks. The peaks, however, were limited to a few events and never exceeded the endurance limit of the cable. Overall, the study confirmed recent findings in cable tensile force analysis of active winch-assist operations and provided evidence of the underlaying mechanisms that contribute to cable tensile forces.
Highlights
Forest managers in the Pacific North West (PNW) are evermore relying on steep, challenging terrain for timber harvesting because of the over exploitation of easy-access stands, fibre shortage, extended natural disturbance, and increasing demands on the timber harvesting land base [1,2]
While both integrated and anchor-based winch-assist configurations are currently being employed throughout the PNW, anchor-based systems are growing in popularity amongst operators and have become the predominant technology for tethered harvesting in the region
This study describes the cable tensile forces recorded during winch-assist operations using an anchor machine configuration in a typical, fully-mechanised, steep slope harvesting operation in the PNW
Summary
Forest managers in the Pacific North West (PNW) are evermore relying on steep, challenging terrain for timber harvesting because of the over exploitation of easy-access stands, fibre shortage, extended natural disturbance, and increasing demands on the timber harvesting land base (e.g., environmental protection, recreational demands, etc.) [1,2]. In this context, safety and production concerns in traditional steep slope harvesting systems (i.e., hand falling and cable logging) have led to the development and rapid adoption of winch-assist technology in the region [3,4,5]. Some of the benefits implicit to anchor-based technologies are realized through the ability to employ more powerful winches and larger cables, as well as the ease of set-up and enhanced reliability of the anchoring solutions [1,7,15,23,24,25]
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