The design and analysis plays a major role for determining the root cause for the problem. Once the problem and its root cause were well defined, the solution for addressing the problem would be made clear.
The engine excitation frequency and the chassis natural frequency were coming closer and it leads chassis to resonate. The resonance increases vibration levels at the Tractor footrest which was reducing comfort level of the operator.
The vibration reduction methodologies like stiffening the structure, isolating the source from excitation and dampening techniques were studied to reduce vibration levels at footrest. The benchmarking evaluation was done with selected tractor models qualitatively to assess the difference in vibration level perception for customers. The test methodology and data acquisition methodology was formulated and used for better analysis and discussions.
In this paper, the author demonstrated the systematic approach to reduce tractor footrest vibrations by 20%-25% through concept design, virtual analysis and experimental validation.