Tire-Artificial Soil Contact Properties and Effect on Crop Yield from Self-Propelled Sprayer Tires

Highlights VF agricultural radial tires can carry 40% more load at the same inflation pressure than standard radial tires. Cohesive-frictional artificial soil was penetrated by statically loaded sprayer tire to evaluate tire footprint characteristics. VF sprayer tire footprint characteristics showed significantly increased length and area at low inflation pressure on soft soil. Maximum rut depth was statistically shallower with reduced tire inflation pressure under full load conditions. Abstract. Relatively few studies on tire-penetrated soil contact properties of Very High Flexion (VF) radial tires for heavy-axle load self-propelled equipment have been done. Soil bin tire testing on cohesive-frictional artificial soil was conducted to investigate the effects of 41 and 54 kN tire load settings of a VF 710/70R42 sprayer tire, inflated to low and high tire inflation pressure settings (TIP) on 3-D contact parameters (length, width, and area) and soil rut depth. Corn yield data were compared from tire-trafficked lanes and untrafficked lanes to investigate trafficking effects on crop yield. Lowering tire inflation pressure resulted in statistically greater contact length and contact area and shallower soil rut depth (p < 0.05). Contact width was not significantly affected by TIP. Sprayer traffic resulted in a 15.8% reduction in yield compared to the yield from untrafficked lanes. The tire-to-soil contact area was 1.52 times the “gross flat plate” contact area measured on a rigid surface. The soil bin method for measuring pneumatic tire penetrated contact properties on the deformable cohesive-frictional artificial soil (COV of 1.79%, N = 36) was better than the “Gross-flat plate” method on the rigid surface for soil compaction management. Further study is needed measuring tire-penetrated contact properties for various tires and their effects on crop yield. Keywords: Artificial cohesive-frictional soil, Contact area, Contact length, Contact width, Corn yield, Soil rut depth, Tire inflation pressure, Very high flexion (VF) radial tire.