Power performance of farm tractor in field operations

Tractors play a fundamental role in agriculture as the main power resource for operation with various add-on agriculture machinery. The most energy and labor intensive among agro-technological operations is soil plowing. The trend in a plow design favors tractors with substantial power [24, 26], but ultimately it is determined by the size and construction of the machinery satisfying the needs of smaller farms [19]. Optimal tractor and machinery parameter selection, as a function of various field operations, not only improves the economics of such activities, but also reduces exhaust pollution and other negative environmental effects. The power requirements and energy consumption may be reduced through optimizing power characteristics and engine parameters [2, 3, 11, 31]. The CO2 emissions may be reduced by minimizing idling states of the engine and maximizing the engine work load. The operational engine parameters are engine speed, transmission gear ratios and engine torque [1, 14]. The experience and reaction time of the tractor operator also play an important role in maintaining these parameters in optimal range [4, 18, 23, 28, 29] and optimal engine utilization [4, 12, 21]. Monitoring the performance indexes of operational power in various conditions provides data of engine modes of operation and fuel consumption. Not many methods and mathematical power performance models as a function of field parameters exist. In this paper we present our evaluation method and introduce the performance indexes of operational power performance obtained in various conditions. It includes the evaluation of power use of an agriculture tractor engine in various plowing operations and the results of a comparative study of power performance as a function of field size. Other studies [9, 10, 20] focus more on fuel and energy consumption efficiency and toxic exhaust emission characteristics.