Computer simulation of ballast management for agricultural tractors

The ballasting weights on farm tractors are rarely distributed optimally resulting in poor tractive efficiency and soil compaction. The need for a comprehensive and concise method to optimize farm tractor ballasting has initiated the development of user-friendly software that incorporates existing theoretical and empirical models. The Windows based software written in Visual Basic© provides a collection of data entry panels associated with tractor, soil, tyres and implement. The software calculates the tractor performance parameters including the optimal ballasting on rear and front axles. Software results estimated ballast requirement within 88–96 percent of field data.