To subscribe to Agweek, click here. On the surface much like any other lawn tractor, the Stealth is perhaps the first tractor in the world made entirely of the materials used in military fighters of the same name. It's not that engineering professor Max Yen and his student assistants at the John Deere Research Laboratory at Southern Illinois University are trying to make tractors invisible to enemy radar. Instead, the work is designed to evaluate materials that could make agricultural tractors, lawn and garden equipment and other vehicles faster, lighter, cheaper and more durable than their steel and aluminum cousins. Deere established the relationship with SIU in 1997, after Yen visited the company's internal research lab at the invitation of a former student.
Composites are plastic-like materials made from differing quantities of fiber, plastics and glue.
For their weight, they are quite strong, Yen said. Deere was already looking at composites when SIU joined the picture, Yen said. In fact, the company designed and built the Stealth tractor as a test. The Stealth tractor, for instance, was tested the equivalent of 40 years of use in less than one year. It passed its tests resoundingly, Yen said.