Driving speed influence on operator vibration exposure in forwarding operations
2021
Vasiliauskas, G., Vytautas Magnus Univ., Kaunas (Lithuania) | Butkus, R., Vytautas Magnus Univ., Kaunas (Lithuania) | Zinkevicius, R., Vytautas Magnus Univ., Kaunas (Lithuania)
Mechanized forest works, especially cut-to-length operations, have spread widely over the last decades. Operation of harvesters and forwarders is related with increased productivity compared with manual cutting, generally better working conditions for operators, but it also might have some negative aspects. As the productivity of forwarders depends strongly on the transportation distance to unloading location, forest road conditions, log density on site, there are efforts of the drivers and contractors to work more efficiently and to achieve better productivity. As the operation with the crane depends strongly on the operator’s skills and log density, there are limited possibilities to make improvements. Therefore, operators attempt to increase the driving speed still acceptable to achieve the highest possible performance. However, this usually leads to increased operator vibrations. The aim of this study was to justify the forwarder driving speed of full and empty travel, which could ensure best productivity results with the lowest whole-body vibration exposure on the operator. The research was carried on the typical forest road, where the empty and full transport was carried out at speeds ranging from 5 to 15 km•hE−1. The results show that optimum speed for empty and full travel operations was approx. 8 km•hE−1. At this speed the daily exposure value standardised to an eight-hour reference period A(8) would be less than 0.5 m•sE−1 for full transport operations and ~0.57 m•sE−1 for empty transport for total 10 km driving distance.
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