TEST OF AN ANIMAL DRAWN FIELD IMPLEMENT CART

Paolo Spugnoli; Alessandro Parenti; Piernicola Masella; Esteban Melani

doi:10.4081/jae.2008.2.1

Original Articles

30 June 2008

Vol. 39 No. 2 (2008)

https://doi.org/10.4081/jae.2008.2.1

TEST OF AN ANIMAL DRAWN FIELD IMPLEMENT CART

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All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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animal traction, horse-drawn hitch cart, PTO traction-powered efficiency.

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Authors

Paolo Spugnoli

mikimos@mac.com

Alessandro Parenti

Piernicola Masella

Esteban Melani

The field performance of a horse-drawn hitch cart equipped with a PTO system powered by the two cart ground wheels have been investigated. For this purpose field tests on clay and turf soil, with varying ballast and PTO torque, have been carried out pulling the cart by a tractor. Preliminary tests were aimed at assessing the traction capability of horse breed. These tests showed that the mean draught force given by two of these horses was 173daN, average working speed was about 1m*s-1, resulting a mean draught power developed by each horse of about 0.86kW. The PTO cart system performance has shown that the torque has not exceeded 2.4daN*m, maximum draught or PTO power was 1.15kW, rotation speed just higher than 400min-1, with mean efficiency of about 50%. These values are consistent with horse performance and small haymaking, fertilizing, seeding and chemical application machine requirements.