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Laboratory Studies Into Undercarriage Systems<br />

Table 3: Rut parameters for different forward speeds, statistically identical values are<br />

followed by the same letter (a, b or c)<br />

3.1.2.4 Discussion and Conclusion<br />

Treatment Area (m 2 ) Width (m) Max. Depth (m)<br />

900/5/0.5 at 0.28 m/s 0.0276 a 0.81 a 0.07 a<br />

900/5/0.5 at 0.85 m/s 0.0179 b 0.68 b 0.055 b<br />

900/5/0.5 at 1.52 m/s 0.0168 b 0.69 b 0.053 b<br />

LSD 0.0037 0.037 0.007<br />

The data showed the significant influence of speed on soil displacement. Aboaba (1969)<br />

did not give an explanation why this was the case. Assuming soil could physically be de-<br />

scribed as a damper-spring system, this behavior would be due to the time depending elon-<br />

gation of the damper. The longer a force is applied, the more the damper contracts, i.e. soil<br />

compacts. The speed of 0.85 m/s used in the soil bin created marginally more soil dis-<br />

placement than common harvest speed at about 1.5 m/s. If the speed was significantly re-<br />

duced to 0.29 m/s, the impact would be bigger. Thus 0.85 m/s was considered a reasonable<br />

compromise between operational safety and the replication of real speeds. The result of a<br />

speed at 0.29 m/s compared to the other two visualizes the possible damage occuring in<br />

headlands originating from slower speed.<br />

3.1.3 Gravimetrically Measured Dry Bulk Density<br />

Dry bulk density was measured for all experiments gravimetrically as described in Section<br />

2.2.3.1. However, due to the large variations reported by Ansorge and Godwin (2007) de-<br />

tails on gravimetrically measured dry bulk density are only given in the Appendix 2. The<br />

sensitivity of the soil displacement measurement was significantly greater and therefore the<br />

focus will be on that measure.<br />

Ph.D. Thesis Dirk Ansorge (2007)<br />

36

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