Influence of Ploughshare Wear on Plough Efficiency

Regarding agricultural machines, one of the main durability requirements are the wear resistance of the soil engaging tools. Wear of soil engaging tools should be minimized, since it impairs the tool specifications and affects tractor performances, tillage quality and machine maintenance costs. The purpose of this work was to investigate the impact of a worn ploughshare on tractor performances. Wear leads to a geometrical change of the soil engaging tools and previous studies investigated the relationship between the tool cutting edge geometry and the developed drought by means of trials and Finite Elements Modelling. However, no study has reported the influence of worn ploughshares on the power requirements of soil engaging tools. The methodology adopted in this study consists in a comparison of the tractor performances between its configuration with a plough equipped with a worn ploughshare and the configuration with the same plough with a new ploughshare. The tractor speed was measured with a GPS receiver and important tractor parameters such as engine torque and fuel consumption were acquired through a CAN logger.