Equipment Track Impacted Field Areas during Harvesting, Baling, and Infield Bale Logistics

Abstract. The intensity of the traffic caused by the farm vehicles in mechanized agriculture generates track impacted areas that aggravate the soil compaction in the fields. Most studies addressed the compaction that occurs during the pesticide application or harvest of the crops. The infield bales logistics also involves heavy traffic of machinery and will be more complex rather than the systematic equipment movement in spraying, harvesting, or baling operations. To evaluate the track impacted areas during infield bale logistics (aggregation) along with harvesting and baling, an R simulation program was developed. The simulation mimicked the actions of Harvester, Baler, Tractor, and an automatic bale-picker (ABP) on the field after simulating the bales layout on the field and evaluates the harvest and baling operations times, distances, and impacted field areas. The ABP automatically picks bales and loads them on to its undercarriage and transports them to the designated field outlet. Several crops (e.g., yield), field (e.g., area, shape), machine (e.g., swath), and operating (e.g., bales/trip, outlet location) variables will influence the infield logistics outputs. The simulation also includes the circular turning paths (for tractor and ABP) while collecting the bales, which will further increase the precision of the logistics outputs. These tracks impacted areas were studied for ABP with bales ranging from 2 to 18 and were compared with a control method of using a tractor loader that can handle only a single bale. The simulation used the strategy of collecting the “next-nearest” bale in the collection loop. Simulation also included the turning mechanism of the vehicle to produce more realistic results..Distance travelled by machines of various operations times their respective track widths (footprint) determined the track impacted areas under different scenarios. Initial simulation results indicated that harvesting and baling are common scenarios both for ABP and control that produced the same variation, and (ii) the infield bale logistics indicate a significant reduction of track impacted areas while using the ABP compared to the control method. Further work on the impact of several operating variables on the track impacted areas is in progress. Based on the results, it is therefore recommended to utilize the maximum allowable capacity of ABP.