Performance of wheel and track running gear on liquid manure spreaders. Canadian Agricultural Engineering 42(1

Performance of wheel and track running gear on liquid manure spreaders. Can. Agric. Eng. 42:019-025. A field experiment was conducted to characterize soil-vehicle interactions and to measure tractor power/fuel requirements when hauling a fully loaded tank spreader (18 m3) fitted with rubber tracks (2721x635), high flotation tires (28L26) or conventional truck tires (445/65R22.5). A second objective was to apply an existing soil compaction model to the data from this field trial and to determine if its estimates of wheel rut depth were reasonable. The experiment was carried out in late autumn on a harvested soybean field (silt loam soil) located in southwestern Ontario. Fuel consumption and drawbar draft were measured during the traffic treatments with an instrumented tractor, and selected soil properties were measured afterwards. An analytical-type soil compaction model was used to estimate the wheel rut depth for the two pneumatic tire treatments. The type of running gear had a highl