A tractor instrumentation and data acquisition system for power and energy demand mapping

A complete tractor instrumentation and data acquisition system was developed and installed in Massey Ferguson 3060, agricultural tractor for power and energy demand mapping of the agricultural field operation in Malaysia. The instrumentation system is able to measure and displayed information on engine speed, PTO speed, forward speed, drive wheel slippage, acres worked, fuel consumption per hour, fuel consumption per hectare, acres per hour, cost factor, fuel consumed, fuel remaining, and distance. The data acquisition system that was currently being developed consists of a datalogger system that is interfaced to a locally designed and fabricated drawbar pull transducer to measure horizontal pull at the tractor drawbar, wheel torque transducers to measure torques at both tractor rear wheels, PTO shaft torque transducer to measure the torque at the tractor PTO output, and a 3-point auto hitch dynamometer to measure the horizontal and vertical forces on the implement behind the tractor. Static calibration tests on the designed transducers showed excellent measurement linearity (correlation coefficient closed to 0.99). The field trials show that the system was able to function successfully without giving much problems. All transducers were able to scan and record by the datalogger under the harsh field environments. The stored data in the memory card from the field trials was able to be down loaded into the hard disk of the host computer.

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