Investigation of Petroleum Use in Off-road Agricultural Machinery and Analysis of J1939 Controller Area Network (CAN) Data for Advanced Machinery Testing

Nearly all modern off-road agricultural machinery are powered by petroleum, primarily diesel fuel. Equipment manufacturers work to improve fuel efficiency of their equipment to provide better value to their customers. Benefits of reducing petroleum use include lower operating costs, improved operational efficiency, improved energy security, and environmental benefits. Agricultural tractor testing focuses primarily on characterizing maximum performance but there is a need for advanced test procedures to better measure fuel efficiency for load cases representative of in-field operations. This would help farmers make better equipment purchasing and utilization decisions and help manufacturers quantify efficiency improvements; ultimately driving continued progress toward better efficiency. This research explored historic diesel fuel use for off-road agricultural machinery, current trends in improving diesel efficiency, and potential to better assess fuel efficiency with advanced test procedures. Additional work evaluated the accuracy of machine-reported data that has the potential to be used for creating advanced test procedures. Results showed that machine-reported engine speed is a good predictor of actual engine speed but there was statistically significant difference between measured torque and torque calculated from machine reported parameters. Tools for collection and analysis of in-field machine data were also explored and an application was developed as proof-of-concept for SAE J1939 data logging and real-time analysis. Each of the software and hardware tools explored demonstrated advantages for individual use cases and provided practical options for J1939 field data collection.