News Archive - Page 5 of 7

Field tests: forest road bearing capacity

24. July 2018

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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Two new partners in TECH4EFFECT!

17. July 2018

Confirming the high relevance of research and innovation in TECH4EFFECT, two additional organisations have recently joined the TECH4EFFECT consortium. The Department of Forest Work Science and Engineering from the University of Goettingen (Germany) is continuing the work previously done at Freiburg University on timber harvesting and site impact. The South African Stellenbosch University is a key connection point to the South African forestry sector, especially to provide machine derived data to the efficiency portal and associated research.

Read more about our two new consoritum members in our partners section.
Have a look at the website of University of Goettingen
Have a look at the website of Stellenbosch University

SGGW

Field trip and consortium meeting in Warsaw

10. July 2018

Publication: Modifying the settings of CTL timber harvesting machines to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions

28. June 2018

Following extensive field trials, LUKE just published results on experiments with Ponsse harvesters:

Adjustment of machine settings had an effect on fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
Large energy saving potential in the Nordic and Baltic regions alone:
Potential savings may amount to almost 50 million litres of diesel per year.
Stem size also had a strong effect on fuel consumption and productivity.

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.

2 Positions in precision forestry at NIBIO

7. May 2018

Two positions are currently available at NIBIO in precision forestry, one post doc position and one researcher position:

For details on the post-doc position check out: Post-doc job add

For the researcher position: Researcher job add

Publication out: operational UAV based approach for stand-level assessment of soil disturbance after forest harvesting

24. April 2018

The first TECH4EFFECT publication in 2018 coming from Bruce Talbot et al. from NIBIO is now avialable for free download, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research:

Operational UAV based approach for stand-level assessment of soil disturbance after forest harvesting

Read the abstract or download the whole publication: http://www.tech4effect.eu/media-corner/publications/

Consoritum meeting in Warsaw

15. March 2018

The Warsaw University of Life Sciences (SGGW) is hosting our third consoritum meeting from 14-16. March 2018. We are looking forward to progress on sustainability and efficiency in forestry using data and technolgy! Videos of our field trip coming soon!

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Data from Canada for the Efficiency Portal

14. February 2018

FPInnovation’s Jean Plamondon has recently installed and is testing the first data transfer green box (FeltBoks) on a Tigercat 855HC running a Logmax 7000 XT head in Quebec. The data, which is collected via an android app running on the operator’s device, feeds into the TECH4EFFECT Efficiency Portal and will allow the contractor to not only store or analyse his own data, but compare it with others operating in similar conditions. FPInnovations bring considerable technical know-how and years of experience with their own FPSuite products (http://fpsuite.ca/) to TECH4EFFECT.

Field trials: Cable-assisted timber harvesting on steep terrain

1. February 2018

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