Modeling of Mechanized Sugarcane Harvesting to Support Decision-Making on Asset Management

The development and application of modeling in agriculture are a valuable tool that can be used as a guide for research and technology management. Several studies were carried out to evaluate the operational performance of sugarcane harvesters, but always focussed on measuring operational capacity at constant speed. This study aims to propose a model that simulates the harvesting operational capacity using as variables the components that define the harvestability index and the nominal capacity of the harvester to feed on and process sugarcane with its active components. The mechanized harvest model was validated by a performance test on a harvest front with four harvesters lasting 24 h. The Chi-square statistical test indicated that the values obtained from operational yield in the field and the model estimates agreed with each other, indicating that the model fits for the purpose. Subsequently, the model was submitted to explore analysis where we could verified the impact of the main offenders—harvestability index (HI) and the nominal yield of the harvester (NY)—on the performance of the mechanized harvesting, demonstrating that the osperational speed is a function of HI and NY.