Soil Machine Interaction in Digging and Earthmoving Automation

The purpose of this work is to present a physical description of soil-tool interaction according to a few basic principles. Usually in such work, many angles of earthwork are described by experimentally fitted models. These are of limited use and are not suitable for the description of a complex process.

In this work, we consider the soil cutting force, the soil penetration, and the filling force as the main factors in soil-tool interaction. These forces are described in an universal earth moving equation which takes account of both the cohesion and friction parameters of soil.

Quasi-static and dynamic models of soil tool interaction (impedance) are described too, which models are the fruit of our experimental work aimed at identifying some parameters to use as feedback in earth moving automation. Soil slope, inertial force and other effects are also considered in this.