I have just scanned this very old article by Zimmerman, but the numbers are so small that I don't think they can be read on e-mail. I'll try something else, but it'll take a while: I'll summarize the article (fairly wordy) and see if I can blow up the graphs so they can be read.
It would be interesting to have a modern agricultural engineer study this article to see if there is any correspondence between ground speeds and greatly-increased horsepower needs as speeds go up. That was certainly the case with Zimmerman's research. For example, at 2 mph, a particular plow required 4.5 hp, but at twice the speed, it required almost three times the horsepower. Raising the speed to 4.5 mph added almost 2.5 hp to the requirement. This looks a lot like some of the laws of various forces in physics, in which (IF I remember this correctly) forces go up--or down--as the square of the change in speed. If you hit a brick wall in your car at 30 mph, there is X amount of force. If you double the speed, forces go up four times (2-squared). Hitting the same wall at 60 is going to be four times more unpleasant. What COULD be at work in the Zimmerman research is that the shape of the early plow moldboards is responsible for at least some of the extra resistance at higher speeds. Modern moldboards appear to be less curved and probably offer less resistance to soil being thrown back against it. I have never plowed with a "modern" plow, but I'd bet that it wouldn't turn over very well at 2 mph. Can anybody with experience second that?
I'm sorry to say that I'm not an engineer, so please take my "observations" with any amount of salt necessary. I'd be glad to have input from anybody who can correct any of these armchair engineering notions.
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