Analysis of Agricultural Working Load Experiments for Reduction Gear Ratio Design of an Electric Tractor Powertrain

Recent environmental issues such as exhaust gas and greenhouse effect make the agricultural machinery market takes into account the hybrid and electric propulsion technology used in automotive engineering. Generally the agricultural machinery, particularly an agricultural tractor, needs large load capacity and long continuous operating time comparing with conventional vehicles. In case of a pure electric tractor, it is necessary for considering large capacity batteries and long charging time. Therefore we take an AER extended PHEV (All Electric Range extended Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) power transmission system in developing an electric tractor in this study. First we propose a PHEV powertrain structure in order to substitute the conventional diesel engine equipped tractor. And we performed the road tests using a conventional mechanical tractor with various load conditions, which were classified and statistically treated real agricultural works. The test results were analysed with respect to the power characteristics of the power source. Finally using the test result, we designed two-stepped reduction gear ratios in the proposed an electric tractor powertrain for carrying out typical agricultural works.