Rating of Agricultural Tractors by Fuel Efficiency

This study was conducted to develop an index of fuel consumption to rate agricultural tractors by their fuel efficiencies. The fuel consumption index consisted of two components: basic and operational indexes. The basic index is to consider an average amount of fuel consumed by engine when it transmits 20 and 100% of the rated power. The operational index is to consider the fuel consumed by tractor for typical field operations: plowing, rotavating, and the remains. The equations and procedures to obtain these indexes were proposed. The method and fuel consumption rate to classify tractors into 5 grades were also proposed. The best 15% of the tractor models were rated as the first grade, 20% as the second grade, 30% as the third grade, 20% as the fourth grade, and 15% as the fifth grade in order of fuel efficiency. Using the fuel consumption index, the classification was conducted on 143 tractor models tested at the National Institute of Agricultural Engineering from 2000 to 2007. The proposed 5-grade system of classification using the fuel consumption index could be used to rate the fuel efficiency of 20-100 kW tractor models produced over past 10 years in Korea.