Investigating the Factors Affecting Cabin Comfort for Agricultural Machinery

Customer expectations for cabin tractors from comfort perspective has grown multifold in the recent years. Cabin noise and vibration is one of the crucial parameters which drives comfort feel for the customer. This would enable customer to remain comfortable during long working hours. Moreover, Cabin Tractors with lesser noise levels found to have better acceptance by Customers all over the world. The Nebraska reports studied for US based tractor shows evolution of trend of cabin noise in 80-100HP tractors in last couple of decades. Undoubtedly, tractor manufacturers have put lot of efforts towards meeting legislation demand & stringent customer requirements for European and US market. This paper presents the work carried out for investigating major contributing factors affecting tractor cabin Noise & Vibration for a Noisy cabin tractor. Virtual and experimental studies have been carried out to identify the principal source of noise and the transfer paths for cabin noise distinguishing contribution of airborne and structure borne noise through commercially available software’s. Virtual validation has helped to identify critical paths and contribution of each path. This virtual and test study carried out on Noisy tractor and comparison with Silent tractor has benefited to list down parameter affecting cabin noise Some of the modifications of acoustic material were attempted to check potential benefit in cabin noise. Moreover, the core findings of this research paper are compiled as part of NVH contenting strategy and being used as design guidelines for future projects.