Preliminary results from the on-farm evaluation of an experimental farm transport vehicle

Abstract

An experimental vehicle has been built to investigate the advantages likely to be gained from a vehicle designed to optimize performance of farm transport operations, in contrast to the conventional agricultural tractor, which is optimized for heavy draught work. The aims are to evaluate both the overall concept and the likely benefits of individual design features of such a vehicle. The experimental vehicle has interchangeable bodies, a suspension system, which allows speeds of up to 65 km/h to be attained, a four-wheel steering system, which provides good manoeuvrability, two- or four-wheel drive and mechanical or hydrostatic transmission. It has been used under normal farming conditions for transporting manure, grain, grass and sugar beet, for spreading manure and, with a pick-up and chopper-blower unit mounted at the front and a forage body carried on the chassis, as a self-contained harvester-transporter. Performance on these operations has been compared with that of conventional equipment. Methods of analysis of the data have been developed to enable the benefits of different aspects of the design of the vehicle to be quantified. It is expected that this will lead to improved methods of establishing specifications for agricultural vehicles to meet the performance requirements necessary to achieve given levels of farm profitability.