A study on workplace conditions, work efficiency and determination of physiological workload of forest workers during the debarking activities

Abstract: In this study, the harvested tree debarking activities during the peeling of wood raw materials were investigated by with the bark peeling iron/bar, bark peeling axe and chainsaw mounted bark peeling equipment controlled by forest forekers. The subject of the study is to determine the workplace conditions, working efficiency and physiological workload of the workers. The aim of this study is to determine the workplace conditions that affect the labor productivity of the worker during the harvested tree bark peeling activities in the harvesting areas where scotch pine trees are cut and to determine the physiological work load that occurs under these conditions. For this purpose; time measurements related to the tree bark peeling activities performed by the workers with chainsaw-mounted peeling equipment, bark peeling axe and bark peeling iron were performed. With these measurements, under the effect of independent variables affecting the working efficiency, the productivity and physiological workload of the workers related the 3 different tree bark peeling methods performed by the workers were determined. In the workplace conditions where this study was carried out, the work efficiency and working time prediction models for bark peeling of Scotch pine trees were created. In addition of this, the physiological workload resulting from the bark peeling activity under the effect of the independent variables was measured. The physiological workload (%HRR) value of bark peeling was calculated among the values 27.7% to 36.9%. According to the physiological workload values, it was determined that the bark peeling activity level was composed of light and moderate weighted works.