Effect of Subsurface Materials on Earthwork Operation Costs of Forest Road

Year 2017, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 44 - 51, 05.12.2017

Iman Pazhouhan Akbar Najafi Abolghasem Kamkar Rouhani Javad Vahidi

Abstract

Major cost of forest construction
operation is spent to earthwork operations. Therefore, time studies, estimation
machine productivity and earthwork operation cost would be necessary to better
utilization of current resources. In this research, impact of subsurface
materials as key factor in forest road construction operation was investigated
in a one kilometer forest road as study area. Subsurface material of the road,
constructed by a Hydraulic excavator and a bulldozer, was contained three
layers in term of digging: soft (soil), medium and hard (rocky). For this
purpose, time of machines work cycle elements included warm up, movement from
camp to study area, extracting remained trunk if any, earthwork activity,
mealtimes and regular delays were accurately recorded during 15 working days.
Furthermore, relevant cut and fill subsurface material was measured precisely.
The results of continues time studies showed that mean production rates vary
from 34.98 m3/hr in hard layer to 331.63 m³/hr in soft layer. The
results indicated that there was a direct relationship between rock share
volume and delay times, therefore technical and personal delays in rocky layers
were considerably more than other layers. Proportions of delays were 9% and 16%
in soil and rocky layers, respectively. Also, production cost was 0.12 $/m³,
0.27 $/m³ and 1.13 $/m³ in soil, medium, and rocky
layers, respectively.

Keywords

Time study, Earthwork operation, Digging, Rock share, Hourly cost

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