Safety is the most important aspects in every society and it is a major issue in the agricultural industry, which continues today as one of the most hazardous industry in the world with comparatively high fatality rates. Hundreds of farmers die each year due to tractor rollovers despite the fact that a highly effective safe guard is available in the form of a rollover protective structure. The use of rollover protective structure on farm tractors has attributed to saving numerous lives and has prevented many human injuries over the years. Many tractors come with the ROPS factory installed; however, many rollover protective structure were apparently removed by the tractor’s owners due to the high clearance zone, which may cause the rollover protective structure to hit damage produce located on low hanging tree branches, while working in an orchard and that may cause farmers to lose money. The new NIOSH third generation AutoROPS prototype with low clearance zone was structurally simulated and analyzed using a computer-aided design program ANSYS^® to insure the compliance with the Society of Automotive Engineering J-2194 standard requirements. The results proved that the third generations of the AutoROPS did absorb all applied loads in sequence and thus satisfied the J-2194 test requirements.

Eugene A McKenzie, Jr.

Affiliation

Refine Results

Advanced Generation NIOSH Automatically deployable Rollover Protective Structure (AutoROPS)