GRAPPLE SAW’S OPERATING CONDITIONS INFLUENCE ON THE PRODUCTIVITY AND COST OF PROCESSING FELLED TREES

Danilo Simões,Lara Tatiane Avelino,Gislaine Cristina Batistela,Rafaele Almeida Munis,Ricardo Hideaki Miyajima

doi:10.5380/rf.v52i1.75501

Abstract

In the full-tree system, one of the self-propelled forest machines used is the grapple saw, which uses mechanical force to delimbing and crosscutting stems, commonly in processing yards or on the sides of forest roads. Thus, several factors can influence the machine's effective productivity, and consequently, the production costs. Hence, the objective was to analyze the influence of the slope of the land on the productivity and production costs of the grapple saw under different operational conditions. The study was carried out in a forested area, in which there were clonal forests of Eucalyptus urograndis. The processing felled trees operation was performed with a grapple saw capable of accumulating and cutting the 0.85 m² tree bundles in two operating conditions. For the production forecast, the time study was applied, associating it to the volume of drawn wood and the effective work time, accordingly, it was possible to estimate the production cost of the grapple saw. The results allowed to conclude that the effective hourly productivity and the production cost of the log tracing are associated with the slope of the land.

Highlights

The harvesting of mechanized wood is carried out by means of self-propelled machines and machines composed with mechanisms that allow the felling of trees, the processing felled trees and, sometimes, the debarking of the wood, as soon, characterized as self-propelled forest machines
When analyzing the work cycles elements on both operational conditions, it was verified that the ME2 of condition 1 (C1) and all machine elements (ME) of condition 2 (C2) had normal distribution using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test
The study of times is valuable for determining the productivity of self-propelled forest machines (BEHJOU et al, 2008)

Summary

Introduction

The harvesting of mechanized wood is carried out by means of self-propelled machines and machines composed with mechanisms that allow the felling of trees, the processing felled trees and, sometimes, the debarking of the wood, as soon, characterized as self-propelled forest machines. According to Spinelli et al (2014) this self-propelled forest machine has a cabin with a 360 degree rotation, usually with track-type wheelsets, which has the purpose of tracing logs in pre-established sizes according to the specificity of the forest de limitations. In such manner, the information on productivity per effective hour and costs

Methods

Results

Conclusion