Improvement of Operator Comfort of a Vibratory Compactor

Abstract

Vibratory compactors are primarily used for compaction tasks in earthwork and road building. They are regularly exposed to vibrations caused by the moving elements within them like drum and engine and the unevenness of the road or soil profile. Because of these vibrations, the structures are subjected to dynamic loads and the operators are endangered to health issues. A higher prevalence of spine problem, pain in chest, abdomen, arm and shoulder are found in the drivers of the compactors. Strict norms concerning these health issues make the design of an effective operator compartment inevitable on the compactors. At present, Indian earth moving equipment manufacturers follow ISO 2631–1 and ISO 5349–1 to ensure the operator comfort in the compactors. These standards insist practical testing of the operator compartment which can be time consuming. The frequency of dynamic loading plays a pivotal role in determining the operator comfort as well as the damage of the operator compartment structures. The major vibrating frequencies prevailing in the compactor are its drum operating frequencies and engine rotating speeds. In order to protect the operator from health issues and the structures from failure, the operator compartment should be designed in a way that its natural frequencies evade the major vibrating frequencies prevailing in the compactor. In this work, an effort has been made to develop a methodology using finite element analysis to improve the operator comfort of the compactors. The FEA results have been compared with that of experimental testing, and the FEA methodology has been fine-tuned to get a good correlation. In future, this FEA approach will be used to finalize the operator compartment design prior to practical testing with an objective of reducing the development cost and time and ensuring the operator comfort.