Hydraulic Hybrid Cut-to-Length Forest Harvester—Evaluation of Effects on Productivity and Fuel Efficiency

A cut-to-length (CTL) forest harvester is a purpose-built, hydraulically actuated mobile work machine used for felling, delimbing, and cross-cutting trees into dimensions and assortments. In such a machine, the diesel engine load is known to fluctuate greatly over the work cycle. To manage these changing power demands, a hydraulic hybrid system is implemented into a full-scale proof-of-concept machine to discover its functionality and to collect experimental results in real operating conditions. The hydraulic hybrid system installed on a CTL harvester machine was tuned to enable the collection of two actual datasets of timber harvesting, and data collection over a period of production use was carried out. In addition to updating the state-of-the-art research into heavy non-road mobile machinery regarding hybrid systems, this paper discusses the two tests carried out in actual production conditions with the studied hydraulic hybrid system. The adaptations and modifications to the studied and tested system since earlier papers are discussed—especially the improvements in the system dynamics and response as well as the control of the hybrid system. In conclusion, the tested system can be said to operate satisfactorily and shows clear advantages over the conventional system, even though it still has some limitations. The results show that the system has the potential to increase the productivity of the machine through the demonstrated higher peak power, as well as showing improvement in fuel efficiency under highly fluctuating loads, especially with heavy or large-volume tree stems.