Magnitude of WBV Affecting the Tractor with a Timber Trailer Operator During Individual Timber Forwarding Operations

The study deals with measuring operator’s whole-body vibrations (WBV) at work with the tractor with a timber trailer. The research was done directly at the workplace during the production stage of timber forwarding. The goal of the research was to find out how the magnitude of machine-generated WBV influencing the operator’s body is affected by individual activities and work operations of timber forwarding and whether the magnitudes differ during those operations. For the purpose, the process of timber forwarding was divided into seven partial operations. WBV were recorded in the individual partial operations according to the valid standard ISO 2631-1:ISO 1997. During the measurements, duration times of the respective partial operations were recorded. Research results showed a correlation between the respective work operations and the WBV magnitudes. The operator of the tractor with a timber trailer was exposed to different WBV values during almost the entire process of timber forwarding.