Abstract
Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) in agricultural activities is an issue of major concern worldwide notwithstanding the ever stricter regulations issued in this sector. In particular, most accidents are related to the use of tractors and the main causes of this phenomenon are due to the lack of rollover protective structures (ROPSs). This happens especially when tractors are used in particular in-field operations that are characterized by limited clearances between tractor and crop rows so that farmers usually use tractors without ROPS (e.g., dismounting it). To solve such a problem, foldable protective structures (FROPSs) have been proposed, which should augment the operator’s protection. However, FROPS’s conventional solutions underestimate the operators’ risk-taking behavior and the widespread misuse of FROPS due to the efforts needed to operate it. The current study aims at contributing to the improvement of the latter issue proposing the development of a novel approach for the implementation of partial assistance systems (PASs) that can reduce the physical effort of the operator when raising/lowering the FROPS. The proposed methodology, which is based on a reverse engineering approach, was verified by means of a practical case study on a tracklaying tractor. Results achieved can contribute to expanding knowledge on technical solutions aimed at improving the human-machinery interaction in the agricultural sector.
Highlights
Occupational safety is a relevant aspect of the social pillar in sustainable development: safety research aimed at reducing occupational accidents can be valuable for the practical implementation of sustainability at the company level
The authors pointed out the need to reduce the handling load the tractor operators have to deal with when using foldable ROPSs (FROPSs). It is worth mentioning other studies providing solutions that avoid the intervention of the operator, such as the compact roll-over protective structure (CROPS), i.e., a modified four-posts rollover protective structures (ROPSs) for narrow-track tractors developed by Italian researchers from the Italian Workers Compensation Authority (INAIL) in collaboration with the academia, which provides a protective shell on the operator while reducing the height and width of the system [28,29]
The current study aims at reducing such research gaps proposing the development of a novel approach for the implementation of partial assistance systems (PASs) that can reduce the physical effort of the operator when raising/lowering front-mounted foldable ROPS, diminishing in this way its misuse
Summary
Occupational safety is a relevant aspect of the social pillar in sustainable development: safety research aimed at reducing occupational accidents can be valuable for the practical implementation of sustainability at the company level. The unsafe use of this work equipment as well as the use of unsafe tractors, i.e., tractors that are not in compliance with safety protection requirements, are the cause of a large number of serious and fatal accidents in most countries [1,2,3]. It has to be considered that most fatalities occurred when the roll-over protective structure (ROPS) was not installed, or when it was disabled, as in the case of foldable ROPSs (FROPSs): the incidence of these cases is very large as reported by different authors according to which from 30% to 50% of fatalities occurred due to the misuse of tractor FROPS [6,7,8].
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