Speaker
Description
Forest road networks are essential infrastructure supporting mechanized forestry operations. These roads must be sufficiently stable to ensure the safe operation of forestry machines. In Japan, many forests are situated on steep terrains, where access by forestry machines is not possible without properly constructed roads, making it necessary to construct narrow roads at high density. Today, an operational system is widely implemented in which machines operate on this constructed road network. Because these roads are primarily earth structures, proper compaction is crucial to maintaining road stability, particularly during construction, especially when filling work is involved. Hydraulic excavators are widely used worldwide for compaction in forest road construction.
Compaction using hydraulic excavators is carried out not only by crawler tracks but also by beating the ground with the excavator bucket. In particular, bucket compaction is used in areas where sufficient compaction cannot be achieved solely with crawler tracks, such as road shoulders, areas between tracks, and slopes. This operation is essential for achieving uniform compaction of filling materials.
In the field of Civil Engineering, studies on soil compaction have focused on compaction machinery such as vibratory rollers and rammers, where stress distribution within the ground during compaction is measured and compaction characteristics have been clarified. In contrast, research in forestry has lacked such investigations into stress distribution and compaction characteristics. Instead, it has mainly evaluated the effects of compaction from tracked or wheeled vehicles on soil properties. Studies focusing on these effects on soil properties have provided important insights into maintaining forest road networks and for reducing the impacts of machine traffic on soil properties. However, most of these studies have focused on the condition of the road structure or soil after compaction and have not mechanically clarified the “compaction force” applied to the ground by machinery during forest road construction. In particular, although compaction using a hydraulic excavator bucket is widely applied in practice and plays an important role in forest road construction, no studies have quantitatively evaluated the compaction force generated by the bucket’s impact.
The objective of this study is to quantitatively clarify the dynamic compaction force produced by a hydraulic excavator bucket. To achieve this, a measurement system incorporating multiple load cells was developed, and the compaction force generated during bucket impact was measured. This study aims to provide a scientific understanding of excavator-based compaction and to support the development of effective compaction methods for forest road construction.
| Keywords | forest-road-construction; spur-road; contact-pressure; load-cell |
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