Content related to WP3
Winch-assisted forwarders are more and more in use to extract wood on challenging terrain. In this BOKU study, the tensile force and the machine tilt of two winch-assisted forwarders were observed under real working conditions to assess safety risks.
Read about the results in this CROJFE publication, which is now available open access:
Two years of development and a lot of testing by Latschbacher and the Institute of Forest Engineering of BOKU led to this mobile device based application for value-optimized motor-manual bucking. Get our T4E Bucking App now for free from GooglePlay Store!
More information in our Results section!
http://www.tech4effect.eu/results/bucking-app/
BOKU and Konrad are working on enabling advanced operation progress monitoring and performance evaluation through pooling sensor information on cable yarders.
The first field test has taken place during a downhill yarding operation with a Konrad Mounty 4000 yarder to test the system under real-life conditions, contributing to work package 3 – harvesting.
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Compared with purpose-built units, excavator-based harvesters offer many advantages, but they consume more fuel. Fuel efficiency can be increased by a better interface between the excavator and the harvester head.
Spinelli et al from CNR just published testing results of a new adaptation kit in Forests 2019 (10(1), 43; https://doi.org/10.3390/f10010043). The kit is specifically designed to improve the communication between these two components. After installing the adaptation kit, productivity increased 6%, while fuel consumption per hour decreased 3.5%. Fuel consumption and CO2 emissions per product unit decreased 10%, as an average.
Read the abstract or download the full pdf!
Figure 1: One of the excavator-based harvesters at work (left); the adaptation kit (right).
What´s going on under your truck wheel? BOKU is preparing for field tests in the North of Austria. Special soil sensors have been burried to investigate the impact of harsh weather conditions on forest road bearing capacity. High resolution soil parameters and weather data are captured and transmitted to BOKU for analysis, contributing to work package 3 – harvesting.
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Following extensive field trials, LUKE just published results on experiments with Ponsse harvesters:
Read the abstract or download the full pdf!
Whatch the video produced during the field trials: http://www.tech4effect.eu/fuel-economy-tests-harvesters/
Figure 1: The machines studied in the experiment, upper-left the Ponsse Beaver, upper-right the Ponsse ScorpionKing, below the Ponsse Ergo.
In cable-assisted timber harvesting forces on the cable are enormous. But how strong exactly are they?
As part of TECH4EFFECT WP3 , Markus Engel and Andreas Mayerhofer (ÖBf – Austrian Federal Forests ) and Thomas Holzfeind from BOKU carried out investigations on winch assisted harvesting machines in the ÖBf forest district Flachau (Austria). They recorded the inclination of the machine during operation on steep terrain using a tilt sensor installed on the winch assisted Valmet 840TX forwarder. At the same time, the tensile forces in the cable were measured with a load shackle. In addition, all activities of the machine were recorded by an action camera, which will be analysed later together with inclination data and the tensile forces. The results are intended to shed light on the tensile forces that occur in the cable of the machine as a function of the work processes and the machine inclination.
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Cable assisted forwarder operating on steep terrain; pictures: Holzfeind Thomas
The Bucking App is a software for mobile devices to calculate into which length and parts to cut a tree in terms of revenue during motor-manual harvesting operations. Jointly developed by BOKU, Latschbacher and the Austrian Federal Forests (ÖBf), first field tests were conducted recently in Austria.
Project partners LUKE, CNR-IVALSA and PONSSE successfully conducted field trials near Jyväskylä, Finland, on the efficiency of cut-to-length harvesting machines in cooperation with a contractor and their operators. The aim was to reduce the fuel consumption of harvesters during cut-to-length operations by applying various technical settings to the machines, like idle times, engine settings and fine-tuning of hydraulic power supply components.
A team of three to seven researchers, three operators and representatives of the manufacturer was working on site, collecting lots of measurements, study data and video material. Three different PONSSE harvesters were studied but similar measures can then also be applied for other machine types, such as forwarders used in timber extraction.
TECH4EFFECT final event highlights research impacts, provides informed dialogue on forest operations19. July 2021 - 12:25
Towards Zero Pollution: TECH4EFFECT presented at the RTDS Green Week Partner Event on 8 June: 10:10 – 12:30.10. May 2021 - 16:18
TECH4EFFECT Co-ordinator, Rasmus Astrup, presented at EUBCE event19. April 2021 - 15:17
TECH4EFFECT presents drone mapping, T-winch at Norwegian Ministerial event14. October 2020 - 9:15
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