ABSTRACT

The operation of agricultural equipment on highway pavements presents new challenges to the pavement engineering and management community. Equipment such as chemical applicators and grain carts has become larger and heavier, and is often supported by unconventional tire configurations, including low-pressure floatation tires and lugged tires. All such characteristics are unique to the off-road equipment and do not distribute the loads to the pavement surface as normal highway traffic vehicles would. Some of their characteristics could in fact cause less damage than normal highway traffic while other characteristics could cause more damage. It is usually not the individual characteristic but the combination of characteristics of a given vehicle that leads to more or less damage as compared to normal highway traffic. For example, the low tire inflation pressure of off-road equipment should be less damaging than the high tire pressure of normal highway traffic. But when the low tire pressure is coupled with heavier loads, certain tire designs, and low vehicle speed, it may become more damaging than higher tire inflation pressures.