On the development of environmentally friendly all-season vehicles for agricultural purposes

Abstract

In order to harvest and transport the crop on soils with low bearing capacity a number of designs of harvesting and transport vehicles on caterpillar track was developed. Currently, there is a large fleet of harvesting and transport vehicles operating on caterpillar drive in the Far East, CIS countries, Baltic countries, Central Asia, Cuba, Vietnam and China. The main feature of that class of vehicles is necessity to provide the high floatation with minimal destruction of topsoil. The most important customer requirements to the caterpillar drive are the ones for reduction of noise and parts vibration levels, for increase of travelling and operating speeds of vehicles, for driving comfort, for increase of service life and for reduction of negative impact on the soil. Russian agriculture suffers great losses because of the lack of machinery to work on soils with low bearing capacity, which leads to the fact that harvesting of winter crops lasts more than 40 days, and the losses are 42%. On a rainy year, the number of harvesting and transport machinery increases, but the machinery is unable to get on the field and stands idle. To improve the efficiency of agriculture, it is necessary to develop the technical means to carry out the transport and technological processes under adverse weather conditions. A number of crops like soybeans and rice is cultivated using paddy fields, which makes difficulties for crop transporting from harvesters. During fertilizer application, about 40% of the soil surface is compacted by wheels. Compaction of soil during plowing facilitates the formation of large and dense clots worsening the conditions of normal growth of plants. Currently, none of series-produced vehicles used in agriculture meets the requirements of 26955-86 state standard.