Evaluation of whole body vibration measurement on the tractor using MATLAB and Arduino based system

Abstract

The usage of tractor and machinery in the agricultural sector has reduced drudgery in field work. One of the drawbacks of tractor is noise and vibration that give negative impact such as whole body vibration and permanent hearing loss. Therefore, an offline vibration measurement system was developed to analyse the vibration effects at different mode of operation. The developed system used Arduino microcontroller with vibration sensor which perform the test by stored data in memory card, then transmitted the data in MATLAB software. In this study, the system measurement was performed on New Holland The result of vibration exposure level of the operator obtained then compared with the health effect index of ISO 2631. From the overall data, it shown that the vibration exposure was highest at idle and paved condition with 8.3063 m/s2 and 7.3851 m/s2. While for tractor with implement, the vibration much higher with value of 10.3711 m/s2 and 10.5668 m/s2 also in idle and paved condition. In details, based on frequency range between 2 Hz to 5 Hz found out the highest vibration at y and z axis. For noise exposure the dominant peak at 86.6 dB at unpaved road and consider dangerous to the operator if exposure time exceeds 4 hour. Thus, it can conclude that whole body vibration exposure for each operation mode was extremely uncomfortable and dangerous especially in continuous and long exposure of time.