Evaluation and analysis of occupational ride comfort in rotary soil tillage operation

The present study investigates the effect of tractor ride conditions like forward speed, pulling force and tillage depth on overall vibration total value (OVTV). Taguchi's L27 orthogonal array was used to conduct experiments on post-harvested paddy field. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was utilized to obtain linear and quadratic predictive models that can be used to optimize the ride conditions for minimizing OVTV. The magnitude of overall vibration total value varies from 0.727 to 0.913 m/s2 among all the experiments. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) shows that forward speed and pulling force are significant at 5% level. The percentage contribution of forward speed, pulling force, and tillage depth is found to be 76.249%, 21.174%, and 1.794%, respectively. Suitable ride condition with respect to forward speed, pulling force, and tillage depth is 0.6 m/s, 6 kN, and 0.14 m, respectively. The calculated response of linear and quadratic regression models show 1.747% and 1.224% error, respectively. The quadratic regression model is found to be the best suitable with 93% desirability.