Development of a simplified method for evaluating agricultural tractor’s operator whole body vibration

• Three agricultural tractors were run on 6 different test track.
• Three experimental test track were developed with the aim of a simplified test.
• Operator’s WBV accelerations on the three channels were acquired in 36 conditions.
• Results were analyzed as safety value and in frequency domain by a PLS.
• Results confirmed the possibility of developing standard simplified comfort test.

Whole body vibrations (WBV) are one of the risk factors causing the onset of professional diseases in agricultural tractors operators: a method for assessing vehicle’s properties in terms of vibrations turns out to be fundamental for comfort and safety improvement. Studying agricultural tractor operator exposure to vibrations has always been difficult for the several topics to the tractor is used. Studies have pointed out that the combination of vehicle speed and surface roughness induces a transformation of part of vehicle forwarding speed in vertical accelerations acting as a series of impulses exciting the elastic parts of the tractor to have similar shapes in the frequency domain. Following this consideration the CREA-ING has developed three simplified test track, one for each axis of solicitation, for investigating the possibility of defining tractor’s comfort level with a simplified test.