Infield optimized route planning in harvesting operations for risk of soil compaction reduction

Abstract

Soil compaction is a major problem in arable farming mainly caused by the intensive traffic of heavy machinery. It affects negatively soil and crop development. Even though the first wheeling is considered the most damaging, repeated traffic deteriorates further the soil and subsoil even up to irreversible conditions. Intelligent infield traffic planning in the form of optimized route planning is one key option to mitigate soil compaction. Currently, no comprehensive evaluation of the benefits of such methods exists. In this paper, a harvest logistics optimization system was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of optimized route planning in reducing traffic by generating simulated operational data and comparing it to a set of six recorded fields ranging in size (2–21 ha) and shape. For the evaluation, simulated and recorded data for each 12 × 12 m grid cell within the fields were compared by analysing three variables, that is, traffic occurrences, accumulated traffic load and maximum traffic load per grid cell. The results showed a reduction of the total number of traffic occurrences with a field size weighted mean of relative differences of 9.8%. A reduction of 5.6% for the accumulated traffic load, and an increase of 4.0% for the maximum traffic load. Repeated traffic was reduced in four of the six fields. Even though optimized route planning is not directly intended for traffic reduction, it can notably contribute to such mitigation efforts and adds an extra element to the overall farm strategy for soil compaction mitigation.