Psychoacoustic evaluation of a garden tractor noise

Abstract

In addition to achieving sustainable development of agricultural mechanization, it has causing problems on occupational health and safety for people working in different fields of agriculture. Noise is considered as one of the most debilitating conditions in farming and a comprehensive investigation of this relationship is required. In this study, some factors affecting the noise generated by a Goldoni garden tractor were evaluated. Research factors were including engine speed, gear ratios and type of operation. Accordingly, factorial experiments in completely randomized design with three replicates were performed. According to variance analysis with L_Aeq, PA and UBA, operation type, gear ratio and engine speed were found to be significant (P< 0.01). The results of this study indicate that PA and UBA correlated strongly with L_Aeq analysis (R²=0.97). The results also show that L_Aeq, PA and UBA for rural road are higher than tillage condition. Also, results indicated that the highest mean of L_Aeq, PA and UBA were 77.76 dBA, 9.83 and 21.16, respectively and occurred in the case of rural road and 2100 rpm engine speed.