Analysis of transmission load of agricultural tractors

The objectives of this study were to analyze the load acting on the input shaft of the transmission of an agricultural tractor when it conducts plowing, rotovating and transporting operations under the Korean farming conditions. A survey was conducted to investigate the operational characteristics of such tractor works. To measure the load, a torque transducer was developed and installed on the input shaft of the transmission. A radio telemetry system was used to transmit the strain signals from the torque transducer to a data acquisition system. The time histories of the measured torque signals were digitized and analyzed using the rain-flow cycle counting method to determine their cyclic distributions. The load spectra thus obtained from the different operations were compared and their severeness to the transmission was discussed.