A visual basic program for predicting optimum gear and throttle position for best fuel economy for 32Â kW tractor

A visual basic program was developed to determine the optimum gear and throttle position on the basis of minimum fuel consumption per hectare for ploughing, cultivating and harrowing operations. The program provides an intuitive interfaces by linking database such as tractor, tyre and implement specifications, draft and tractions model constants, fuel consumption model, soil and operating conditions to predict the minimum fuel consumption of selected model. The fuel consumption model was developed by conducting PTO test under variable throttle and load conditions. The coefficient of determination (R2) value for developed model was found close to 0.99. The program was validated with the data collected from the field experiments conducted with a 32 kW PTO power 2WD tractor and 2-bottom reversible MB plough under different operating conditions. It was found that the developed program predicted optimum gear as L3 (6.9 km/h) at 2066 rpm and on an average under predicted slip values by 50-62%, draft by 4-20% and over predicted fuel consumption by −19 to 52% in the depth range of 18-22 cm.