• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.153-160
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• 2016

Purpose: This study was conducted to experimentally investigate the structural safety of and identify critical locations in a front-end loader under impact loads. Methods: Impact and static tests were conducted on a commonly used front-end loader mounted on a tractor. In the impact test, the bucket of the front-end loader with maximum live load was raised to its maximum lift height and was allowed to free fall to a height of 500 mm above the ground where it was stopped abruptly. For the static test, the bucket with maximum live load was raised and held at the maximum lift height, median height, and a height of 500 mm from the ground. Strain gages were attached at twenty-three main locations on the front-end loader, and the maximum stresses and strains were measured during respective impact and static tests. Results: Stresses and strains at the same location on the loader were higher in the impact test than in the static test, for most of measurement locations. This indicated that the front-end loader was put under a severe environment during impact loading. The safety factors for stresses were higher than 1.0 at all locations during impact and static tests. Conclusions: Since the lowest safety factor was higher than 1.0, the front-end loader was considered as structurally safe under impact loads. However, caution must be exercised at the locations having relatively low safety factors because failure may occur at these locations under high impact loads. These important design locations were identified to be the bucket link elements and the connection elements between the tractor frame and front-end loader. A robust design is required for these elements because of their high failure probability caused by excessive impact stress.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.109-119
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the structural safety of the front-end loader for the 90 kW class of agricultural tractors in impact test conditions. Deformation and stress on the loader under the impact test conditions are analyzed using the commercial finite element analysis software ANSYS. In previous research dealing with the initial design of the loader, the maximum stress occurred in the mount and exceeded the yield strength of the material. In this paper, an improved design of the mount of the loader was proposed to reduce the stress concentration in the initial design. The safety of the improved design was verified by performing rigid-body dynamics analysis, transient structural analysis, and static structural analysis under three impact test conditions: a drop and catch test, a corner pull test, a corner push test. It was found that the local stress concentration in the mount that appeared in the initial design was greatly reduced in the improved design, and that the maximum stresses occurred in the three impact test conditions are smaller than the yield strength. It is expected that the design improvement of the mount proposed in this study and the method of analysis may be effectively used to enhance structural safety in the development of new model front loaders in the future.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.5051-5059
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• 2015

Structural behaviour of the front loader for an agricultural tractor was analyzed for three impact test conditions: drop and catch, corner pull, and corner push. Rigid-body dynamic, transient structural, and static structural analyses were conducted using a commercial finite element software. Analysis of the drop and catch test dealt with the case that the bucket located at the maximum elevation was dropped and catched through three steps. Analysis of the corner pull test dealt with the case that the bucket constrained to the ground by a chain at its corner was raised suddenly. Analysis of the corner push test dealt with the case that the corner of the bucket collided with an obstacle. Results of analyses of the three test conditions showed that maximum stress occurs at the geometrically discontinuous location in the mount and is caused from local stress concentration. Results of the present research can be utilized as a guideline to achieve more reliable and safe structural design of the front loaders.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.10-18
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• 2016

A front-end loader (FEL) mounted on an agricultural tractor is one of the most commonly used implements to mechanize routine agricultural tasks. When the FEL is used with a loaded bucket, careful operation is required to maintain safety and avoid spillage when the tractor passes a bump because a change in the gravity center of the tractor due to varied loadings can affect the stability of the tractor. Use of a boom suspension system consisting of accumulators and orifice dampers can be instrumental in reducing pitching vibrations while increasing the handling performance of the FEL-mounted tractor. The objective of this research was to reduce bump shocks by adding an orifice and a flow control valve to the original hydraulic circuit composed solely of accumulators. A simulation study was performed using the SimulationX program to investigate the effects of an accumulator and an orifice-throttle damper on bump shocks. Results showed that the peak pressure on a boom cylinder and the vertical acceleration of a bucket were significantly affected by use of both an accumulator and an orifice damper. In a field test conducted with a 75-kW tractor, the peak pressure of the boom cylinder, and the root mean square (RMS) vertical acceleration of the bucket and seat were reduced by on average, 23.0, 42.2, and 44.9% respectively, as compared to those measured with the original accumulator system, showing that an improved design for the accumulator hydraulic circuit can reduce bump shocks. Further studies are needed to design a tractor suspension system that includes the effects of cabin suspension and tires as well as dynamic analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.26-32
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• 2019

This study was conducted to analyze the stresses by impact loads on front-end loaders attached to tractors using flexible multi-body dynamics. The model was designed and validated by comparing previous experimental data with the simulation data obtained in this study. Nine sets of conditions were designed using three weights (500, 300, and 100 kg) loaded inside a bucket and three heights (1700, 1350, and 1000 mm) of the bucket from ground level. A parametric study was carried out at five locations for two types of parts of a front-end loader. All the safety factors for the five locations under all conditions were calculated and were greater than 1. Thus, the designs of the front-end loaders were structurally safe. Based on this study, front-end loaders attached to tractors can be designed effectively in terms of cost and safety.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.60-70
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• 2015

A front-end loader (FEL) mounted on an agricultural tractor is one of the most commonly used implements for farm work. However, when the tractor carries material using the bucket attached to the FEL on a sloping ground, the materials can spill or roll back over the operator due to the tilted body, thereby requiring the bucket surface to remain level at a constant value regardless of varying slopes. In this study, an active system for controlling the angle of the FEL bucket on a tractor based on the real-time measurement of ground slopes was developed to enable the bucket to constantly remain level. A FEL simulator operated based on an electro hydraulic proportional valve (EHPV) was constructed in the laboratory to develop a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller forming a virtual electronic control unit (ECU) on the computer, which could automatically adjust the bucket angles depending on varying input angles while sending SAE-J1939 associated messages via CAN BUS to the EHPV. The different parameter values for the PID controller due to the gravity effect of the bucket were determined using a manual PID tuning method while assuming that the tractor travels on either an ascending slope or a descending slope. The developed PID control-based self-leveling system showed a mean of steady-state errors of within $1^{\circ}$ and a mean of delayed times of ~ 0.8s when the step input of $+20^{\circ}$ was given, implying that the developed system and control algorithm would be effective in maintaining the bucket angle at a certain value. Future studies include the improvement of the control algorithm to reduce such a time delay as well as the application of the developed algorithm to the FEL mounted on a tractor tested at a testing ground.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.346-352
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• 2010

This paper presents an intuitive interface scheme for controlling a hydraulic backhoe, which is a piece of excavating equipment consisting of a digging bucket on the end of a two-part articulated arm, and typically mounted and rotated on the back of a tractor or front loader. The passive levers/joysticks for actuator operations of a hydraulic backhoe are replaced into electric joysticks with a robotic controller, which will generate the end-effecter command trajectories of the backhoe through joystick rate control in cylindrical coordinate. The developed backhoe with the hydraulic control system showed the maxim position error of 3 cm with intuitive coordinate operations, which would be helpful for conveniently performing various excavating tasks with natural and effective ways.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.20-32
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• 1982

This survey was conducted to investigate the present status of farm tractor utilization for obtaining a basic reference to the establishment of the government's agricultural mechanization strategies. Thirty two counties from the eight provinces except Jeju were covered in this study. From these selected areas, 433 sample farms having farm tractor were taken to obtain the general informations by the enquete, and 93 sample farms among them to investigate the status of daily tractor use in the year of 1980. The analyzed results are summarized as follows: 1. Farm tractors owned by the rice-oriented farms holds 71.5 percent of the total number of tractors the livestock-oriented farms 17.0 percent, and the orchard-oriented farms 7.0 percent. Among the farm tractors 64.3 percent was a large size (46ps) and 35.7 percent a small size(19~23ps). 2. Most of the tractors surveyed were equipped with the essential attachments such as plow and rotavator. About 18 percent of the tractor owners had no trailer, which seemed too high considering the large percentage of tractor use for transportation. The availability of other attachments was very low except a grader on the rice-oriented farms and a hay harvester and a front loader on the livestock-oriented farms. 3. The average size of farm was 3.9 hectare for the rice-oriented farms, 13.9 hectare for the livestock-oriented farms and 7.4 hectare for the orchard-oriented farms. It was obious that the average farm size of was too small compared to the theoretical machine capacity of the tractors. 4. About 70 percent of the tractor operators were in the age of twenties and thirties. About 90 percent of them had an educational level of middle school graduate or above even though their technical level was very low. 5. Any particular problem in tractor use was not found in this survey. From the farmer's preference for purchasing a new tractor, however, it is estimated the demand on a 20-30ps tractor will be more increased. 6. The average annual use of tractor was of about 100 days or 400 hours. It appeared that the rice-oriented farms used most with 412.4 hours per year, and followed by the livestock-oriented farms with 403.6 hours, the orchard oriented farms with 377.7 hours. 7. Among the total hours of tractor use, 47.3 percent was for transportation, and 41.6 percent was for plowing and rotary tillage. The largest portion of the annual tractor use was taken by transportation on the livestock-oriented farms, by land preperation on the rice-oriented farms, and by loading and chemical spraying on the orchard-oriented farms. 8. The hours of tractor use had a peak in May. The hours of use for own farm was remarkably different among the different farm oriented, but there was no considerable difference between the too different sizes of tractor. 9. The hours of tractor use decreased as the age of the operator or the educational level increased. The reason might be that the operators who had a high educational level or were older had a tendency of disliking custom works. 10. The average custom use of tractor was 171.3 hours per year, and the ratio of custom work was 63.7 percent on the rice-oriented farms, 31.7 percent on the livestock-oriented farms and 22.4 percent on the orchard-oriented farms. Among the custom works, the most popular one was the grader leveling. 11. The charge on custom work was about 40,000 Won per hectare for plowing and rotary tillage, and it was the most expensive in the southeastern region, and next followed by the southwestern region. 12. The average plowing capacity of the small tractor was 7.8 hours per hectare in the paddy field, and that of the large tractors was 4.3 hours per hectare. The average rotary-tilling capacities of the small and the large tractors were 6.5 and 4.3 hours per hectare, in the paddy field respectively.