Design and test of a device for acceleration reproducibility of hand held olive harvesters

Hand held olive harvesters may cause severe HAV (Hand Arm Vibration) pathologies to the operators. The measured vibration data should be available to the end users in the instruction manual issued by the manufacturers, who should follow the procedures specified by a C type European standard. Since the hand held olive harvesters do not have such a standard, manufacturers are not able to provide reliable data. This paper describes a test methodology in view of a C type European standard for these machines. The work started with field activities to collect acceleration data to compare with laboratory results, as requested by the EN ISO 20643. A device to simulate the dynamic vibration response of olive tree branches was then designed, assembled and tested with different configurations, to obtain repeatable acceleration data of hand held olive harvester. When the final prototype was configured, a second laboratory was involved, equipped with a different measurement chain to test the reproducibility.