Winching is common in small-scale forest operations, especially on steep slopes, where tractors cannot reach the logs inside the forest. In this case, logs are dragged to the roadside with tractor-mounted winches, for later collection by transportation units. Winching is a heavy task, posing a high physiological stress on winching crew members. The aim of this study was to investigate the relat...

With the increase of importance of bioenergy, the whole tree harvesting system was reconsidered. As a simple way of a whole tree harvesting system, this study analyzed two winching procedures in terms of productivity and influence from terrain conditions. One of the winching procedures was observed on flat terrain, where the felled trees were scattered and then, one-by-one, attached to the winc...

estimating of forest equipment productivity is an important aspect of managing cost in forestry, which leads to reduction of operations expenses. in other words, high capital cost in forest harvesting, is a good reason to argue forest engineering research and time modeling. this paper applied one of the artificial intelligence subsets, which are called artificial neural networks (anns), to pred...

Damage to residual stand is unavoidable and it is one of the main important issues in the forest harvesting. Trees damage may occur in felling and skidding work phase or during skid trail construction. In any case, damage can be very serious to residual stand. Detailed study is necessary to find out the amount and severity of damage to trees; therefore district 14 of Kilesara in Guilan Province...

in the shafaroud forest, logging operation is generally performed by using selective cutting methods. chainsaw and cable skidder are two main forest machines for harvesting of this forest. however, forest harvesting operations result in serious residual stand damage during felling, winching and skidding operations in this forest. residual stand damage resulting from selective cutting was assess...

Energy harvesting based on tethered kites makes use of the advantage, that these airborne wind energy systems are able to exploit higher wind speeds at higher altitudes. The setup, considered in this paper, is based on the pumping cycle, which generates energy by winching out at high tether forces, driving an electrical generator while flying crosswind and winching in at a stationary neutral po...

INTRODUCTION We sought to study the operational and medical aspects of helicopter rescue missions involving the use of a winch. SETTING A single helicopter-based medical service of a pre-alpine region of Switzerland. METHODS We prospectively studied consecutive primary rescue interventions involving winching of a physician, from October 1, 1998 to October 1, 2002. Demographic, medical and o...