Heavy equipment are very heavy and can cause serious damage to the ground if they do not have proper low ground pressure. This is a subject that many people using heavy equipment may not be aware of. It is only because that this subject doesn’t affect their work in any way. However, people who have studied heavy equipment as their subject may know how important low ground pressure is to keep the ground away from much pressure from the heavy equipment. The equipment if do not possess low ground pressure can significantly damage the soil which can be dangerous especially for farmers because they will then slowly and steadily lose the quality of the soil. It may be also possible that the soil may become infertile. Therefore, it becomes very important to reduce the ground pressure from heavy equipment and the keep the quality of the soil intact.
What can be done to reduce the ground pressure from heavy equipment? Well, one of the most important parts that can be done to reduce the ground pressure is replacing the steel tracks with hard plastic tracks. That will significantly bring down the pressure to a larger extent thereby keeping the quality of the soil undamaged. There are few companies that produce such plastic plates that can be used as ground tracks for heavy equipment. Nylatrack plates are one such plate produced by “Quadrant Engineering Plastic Products” that comparatively brings down the weight of the machine. It is said that they are 80% less weighty that the steel plates thus exerting less pressure on the ground. Similarly, there are many more such plastic plates manufacturing companies that play a mighty role in today’s modern engineering and also keeping the ground pressure low.
Another benefit of using plastic tracks is they can easily work on soft grounds which is difficult for heavy equipment with steel plates to do. They can also work on pavements which again may not be so simple for heavy equipment with steel tracks. Exerting low ground pressure will have almost no side effects on the ground. Other than replacing the steel plates with plastic plates, there is one more way to lower the ground pressure. Just by reducing the noise, one can also reduce the ground pressure. The equipment vibrations are soaked up by the plastic plates which only happen if the tracks are flexible in nature. By installing plastic tracks, the tracks of the machine become quite flexible which in turn absorb the vibration coming out of the tracks and thus the noise of the undercarriage goes silent. This means that there is less stress on the drive chain that happens predominantly because the plastic track plates absorb the bending force.
The plastic track plates manufactured by companies are immune to oils and seawater which makes it a machine that can work in extreme conditions. Since it has plastic plates, it is very unlikely that the soil will stick with the plates. This will prevent any sort of damage to the ground.