A new testing facility for agriculture and biosystems engineering will be opening at the Iowa State Agricultural Engineering and Agronomy Research Farm in September 2019.

The testing facility holds a “off-highway vehicle chassis dynamometer” that will be able to test a range of vehicles from tractors, sprayers, combines and construction vehicles under different load conditions.

“We can run full tests on tractors to see how the tractor will perform under loads,” said Stuart Birrell, associate professor and Kinze Manufacturing fellow. “The load conditions simulate what is happening in the field and you can see how the complete vehicle operates as opposed to average tests that just look at individual components.”

Danfoss Power Solutions gifted more than $1.8 million to fund the facility, with $1.2 going toward the off-road chassis dynamometer, according to the press release. The money went through the Iowa State Foundation as a gift from Danfoss, symbolizing Iowa State’s strong collaboration with the company.

“Our department has a very good relationship with Danfoss Power Solutions, particularly with Dr. Steward with his hydraulics courses, which they supported significantly over the years,” Birrell said.

Danfoss, as well as companies across the state, will be able to test complete systems, which will be able to reduce development times and costs. Students will be able to use the dynamometer in classes and labs.

“There are very few testing systems like this in the world, so students will be able to take labs and actually see the complete system of a tractor under load… they will be able to understand what type of messages are going through the tractor under load,” Birrell said.

Students will also benefit from working with advanced sensor and vehicle control systems within off road vehicles.

“This will allow students to see how varying the dimensions of tires will affect how equipment performs in the field,” said Colton Finley, graduate student in agricultural and biosystems engineering.

Finley built a smaller version of the dynamometer at the Biorenewables Complex, giving insight as to how it will work and what some of the components, such as the rollers, will look like.

“The chassis dynamometer will also allow for us to see how much energy is getting transmitted to the ground, minus how much energy it took to move the tractor,” Finley said.

Not only will the new off-highway vehicle chassis dynamometer will be an asset to students, but companies across Iowa will have access to it as well.

“There are probably four or five facilities in the world that have anything close to this capacity, and very few of them are focused on agriculture and off-road machinery,” Birrell said.