The main cause of the compaction of agricultural soils, is the traffic of tractors and machines, with pneumatic tires. When one tire roll on a soft soil, normal and tangencial strengths are applied to it. The tire-soil interface defines characteristics of transmission to the soil mass of these strengths. The main objective of this work was to assess soil reology due to agricultural traffic. The experimental design was a completly randomized (factorial), consisting of two types of tires cross-ply and radial, two tire pressures (168 and 98 kPa), and, three levels of slipage (0.10, 0.20 and 0.30 m m-1), with four replications. The assessment of direct shear strength was carried out on soil samples, using a universal strength machine of the Ele International. The results showed that traffic of agricultural tractor, rolling in over pressured conditions and high motion reduction due to slipage, cause displacement of the tension-deformation curves towards regions of higher shear tensions, allowing potential soil structure degradation.
compaction of agricultural soils; tractor traffic; tension-deformation curves
