FEA Modal and Vibration Analysis of the Operator’s Seat in the Context of a Modern Electric Tractor for Improved Comfort and Safety
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The central purpose of this study is to develop and validate an advanced numerical model capable of simulating the vibrational behavior of the operator’s seat in a tractor-type agricultural vehicle designed for operation in protected horticultural environments, such as vegetable greenhouses. The three-dimensional (3D) model of the seat was created using SolidWorks 2023, while its dynamic response was investigated through Finite Element Analysis (FEA) in Altair SimSolid, enabling a detailed evaluation of the natural vibration modes within the 0–80 Hz frequency range. Within this interval, eight significant natural frequencies were identified and correlated with the real structural behavior of the seat assembly. For experimental validation, direct time-domain measurements were performed at a constant speed of 5 km/h on an uneven, grass-covered dirt track within the research infrastructure of INMA Bucharest, using the TE-0 self-propelled electric tractor prototype. At the operator’s seat level, vibration data were collected considering the average anthropometric characteristics of a homogeneous group of subjects representative of typical tractor operators. The sample of participating operators, consisting exclusively of males aged between 27 and 50 years, was selected to ensure representative anthropometric characteristics and ergonomic consistency for typical agricultural tractor operators. Triaxial accelerometer sensors (NexGen Ergonomics, Pointe-Claire, Canada, and Biometrics Ltd., Gwent, UK) were strategically positioned on the seat cushion and backrest to record accelerations along the X, Y, and Z spatial axes. The recorded acceleration data were processed and converted into the frequency domain using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), allowing the assessment of vibration transmissibility and resonance amplification between the floor and seat. The combined numerical–experimental approach provided high-fidelity validation of the seat’s dynamic model, confirming the structural modes most responsible for vibration transmission in the 4–8 Hz range—a critical sensitivity band for human comfort and health as established in previous studies on whole-body vibration exposure. Beyond validating the model, this integrated methodology offers a predictive framework for assessing different seat suspension configurations under controlled conditions, reducing experimental costs and enabling optimization of ergonomic design before physical prototyping. The correlation between FEA-based modal results and field measurements allows a deeper understanding of vibration propagation mechanisms within the operator–seat system, supporting efforts to mitigate whole-body vibration exposure and improve long-term operator safety in horticultural mechanization.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it