Evaluation of testing procedures for ROPS fitted on self-propelled agricultural machinery

Fatalities and serious injuries resulting from rollover accidents involving tractors and self-propelled agricultural machinery often occur in the field. Since 1974 tractors have been fitted with Roll-Over Protective Structure (ROPS) according to the requirements of the EC directive 74/150 EEC. On the contrary rollover protection of the driver was not required for self-propelled agricultural machinery until recently. The recognized potential risk of rollover for these machines, currently considered by the EC Directive 2006/42/EC, has led to manufactures implementing ROPS on new or existing self-propelled agricultural machinery, such as grape harvesters and sprayers. Consequently there is a need to develop standard strength tests for these applications. Nowadays ROPS tests involving agricultural machinery are carried out according to the ROPS testing procedure studied for tractors and/or earth-moving machinery. An evaluation of the applicability of the tractor OECD ROPS Codes 4 and 8 to rollover protective structures retrofitted on in-use grape harvester was performed and the strength test results are presented and discussed. The results showed that the Code 8 procedure was more suitable for evaluating the strength performance of the ROPS retrofitted on the tested grape harvesters. However the results demonstrated also some points where the testing procedures need to be modified in order to match the specific characteristics of the machinery considered.