Abstract
Human activity has significantly impacted Earth, with pollution and climate change posing grave threats to the nearly eight billion inhabitants of our planet. Mitigating these impacts is paramount, as underscored by the Paris Agreement’s ambitious goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Everyone and everything must contribute to meet this objective. The transition to cleaner propulsion methods, such as electrification and hybridization, is pivotal in this effort. While progress has been made in adopting these technologies in road-based vehicles like cars and buses, agricultural and forestry equipment are just beginning this transition. This thesis focuses on designing safe and energy-efficient cable logging solutions, particularly tower yarders, logging carriages, and skyline tensile force monitoring systems. Through modeling and simulation, it was found that a proposed hybrid tower yarder could potentially achieve significant fuel savings—up to 96 % when transporting downhill and at least 22 % when transporting uphill. This results in an engine downsizing potential from 300 kW to 40 kW—while maintaining performance standards. Furthermore, a life cycle assessment demonstrated that the efficiency gains during the operational phase could offset emissions generated during production by a factor of 19. Similar findings were observed in the electrification of carriages, where multiple energy supply concepts were identified. An analytical model predicted substantial fuel savings, especially during downhill operations, with energy autarkic operation being a practical possibility. Practical validation is planned for future testing. Preliminary evaluations of carriage subsystems, including the genset, dissipator, and battery system, revealed promising efficiency levels, highlighting the feasibility of these solutions. Additionally, a skyline tensile force monitoring system showed promising results in improving logging safety and facilitating preventive maintenance. Despite relying on inaccurate manual measurements, estimated and measured tensile forces differed by at most 29 %. In summary, this research underscores the potential of innovative technologies to mitigate environmental impacts in the agricultural and forestry sectors while enhancing operational efficiency and safety.