Motivation:

Forwarders are an essential part of the process chain in fully mechanized timber harvesting. The logs felled by a harvester are picked up by a vehicle-mounted crane, transported from the felling areas to forest roads and unloaded there.

In the Forwarder2020 project, funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 programme, a skidder is being optimized primarily in terms of its environmental compatibility and sustainability. In particular, there is great potential for improvement in the working hydraulics. This is where a high energy requirement occurs during normal load cycles due to unused energy recovery.

The crane's hydraulic circuit is therefore being revolutionized by an innovative interconnection of existing and new components.

Project objectives:

The innovative concepts are intended to achieve significant fuel savings of up to 30% compared to conventional machines. This is achieved by recuperating and regenerating the energy in the crane system using hydro-transformers.

A considerable effect is achieved particularly when thinning forest areas, as a large number of individual loading cycles occur here. As a result, this method is economically more competitive than clear-cutting, making the sustainable management of forest areas easy to achieve.

In addition, by modeling the working hydraulics and kinematics, a deeper system understanding of the skidding train is acquired, which can be transferred to other areas.

By saving energy in the loading and unloading process of a forwarder, the forest is managed both economically and ecologically and a contribution is made to minimizing emissions in the production of renewable raw materials.