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Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Agricultural machine automatic navigation is one of the key technologies in precision agriculture technology system, the in-depth study is important in scientific research, application and social values. In this paper, we investigated the navigation problems in the application of the farm work, including slow on-line speed, bad on-line stability, and poor adaptability of bumpy complex road surface. These problems can be summarized as the speed and stability problems of track tracking in the case of large position deviation or large course deviation. Through the analysis of the work principle and control parameters function of the navigation, a conclusion is made that the correct speed and stability of the position deviation and course deviation of agricultural machinery can be improved by allocating the weight of the position deviation wheel angle decision quantity and course deviation wheel angle decision quantity reasonably. Then in this paper, we developed the navigation control algorithm based on the agricultural machine kinematics model and the pole optimal configuration theory. Because of the small angle linearization of course deviation angle and wheel angle during the deducing, the control law can achieve good control effect only in the ideal straight path tracking control with small position deviation, course deviation, and wheel angle. Based on this, a path tracking control method of aiming pursuit model for agricultural machine navigation was proposed aiming at improving the on-line speed, stability and adaptability to complex road surface of the automatic navigation system of agricultural machine. In this method, we selected a tracking target point on the planning path of agricultural machine ahead, and tracked the target point by controlling the steering wheel angle. The direction of the agricultural machine vehicle center point to the target point was called as the aiming course. The desired steering angle would be larger when the deviation was larger between the course of agricultural machine and the aiming course, with a rapid correction of aiming course deviation to achieve the goal of fast tracking the target path. On the other hand, the desired steering angle would be smaller when the deviation was smaller between the course of agricultural machine and the aiming course, with a stable tracking to aiming path to achieve the goal of stable tracking the target path. In this model, the steering wheel angle was designed to be K times of the aiming course deviation and K was called as control gain. The length of the projection of the agricultural machine vehicle center to the target point vector on the planning path was named as the preview distance. The control gain and the preview distance were two important parameters that affected the control effect of the model. In this paper, there were three steps to prove the feasibility of the method. The control gain K and the preview distance were set up by referring to the result of the pole optimal configuration method based on the kinematic model of agricultural machine. By comparing two methods formula, the position deviation wheel angle decision quantity had a linear relationship with the position deviation in the kinematics model method and the position deviation wheel angle decision quantity had an inverse tangent function relationship with the position deviation. The inverse tangent function relation was more beneficial to maintain proper weight of position deviation wheel angle decision quantity and course deviation wheel angle decision quantity that would make the path tracking control of agricultural machinery navigation more rapid and stable. Simulation analysis results of aiming pursuit model algorithm in different position and different course deviation showed that the proposed method had a fast and stable path tracking performance and good robustness and adaptability to the navigation path tracking. The test results of agricultural machine showed that the control method proposed in this paper had a good effect in the rapid responsibility and line tracking performance. In the case of 0.5, 1, 1.5 m initial position error, the on-line time was 6.8, 8.2, 9.4 s, respectively, the corresponding travelling distance was 6.73, 8.11 and 9.33 m, respectively and the corresponding overshoot was 5.2, 7.0, 8.5 cm, respectively. The maximum error of straight-line path tracking for bumpy uneven field was not more than 4.23 cm, the mean value of the absolute value of the error was 1 cm, and the standard deviation was 1.25 cm, which satisfied the operation requirements of agricultural machine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The articulated frame steering vehicles (ASV) are widely implemented in agriculture, mining, construction and forestry sectors due to their high maneuverability. The ASVs, however, are known to possess lower dynamic stability and yield high magnitude of whole-body vibration, which are reported to be harmful to the operators. Automatic driving system is thus necessary for the ASVs to exclude the human driver from detrimental operations, especially for the agricultural ASV. In order to enable the automation of ASV, path tracking strategies are essential to maintain the normal work of the vehicles. As the ASV dynamics significantly are different from the conventional vehicles with front wheel steering, the path tracking controller derived for conventional vehicles is considered not to be applicable for the ASVs. Moreover, large variations of the vehicle load and the off-road excisions challenge the robustness of path tracking algorithms. In this paper, a path tracking strategy is proposed for the ASVs on the basis of sliding mode control (SMC). The kinematic model of the ASV is derived neglecting the vehicle dynamics. Three measurable errors are defined to indicate the deviation of real path from reference path, i.e. lateral displacement error, orientation error and curvature error. These errors serve as the inputs in order to synthesize the SMC. The exponential reaching law is selected in order to increase the reaching speed and reduce chattering. The sign function of exponential reaching law is replaced by a continuous function to further suppress the chattering. Lyapunov function is then utilized in order to assess the system stability. The system transition performances in terms of response time, setting time and overshooting are tuned via pole placement method. The differential transformation method is implemented to determine the poles, in order to obtain the transition performances while preserving the system stability. Ackermann's formula is used to improve traditional pole placement algorithm and further design the control law. The open loop eigen-polynomial of the system is thus not requisite. Furthermore, the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation is conducted to evaluate real-time performance of the proposed control law. The HIL platform is set up on the basis of national instruments PXI-8110 and CRIO-9024 as well as a host computer. The real-time ASV kinematic model established in the MapleSim platform is downloaded into the PXI-8110 as the simulation plant, and the SMC path tracking algorithm compiled by Simulink is embedded to the cRIO-9024 as the real electronic control unit. The host computer couples the real-time vehicle model and the path tracking algorithm via the LabVIEW platform and displays the simulation status as the upper monitor. The path tracking algorithm then controls the vehicle to follow a circle path in real time. The results suggest that the simulated vehicle path is smooth and almost identical to the reference path. The 3 kinds of errors achieve steady state in 10 s. The proposed SMC controller is then demonstrated to be robust even neglecting the vehicle dynamics. The results also suggest that the SMC with Ackermann's formula can fulfill the prescribed request of the dynamic and the steady performance. The real-time performance of the path-tracking is even better than the off-line simulation. The simulation duration 60 s is equal to the calculating duration in the HIL simulation that means the time is synchronous. Compared with the real vehicle test, the HIL simulation is economical and efficient. This research can provide a reference for the design of agricultural ASV automatic driving system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous development of industry, environment pollution such as soil acidification and heavy metal pollution of soil becomes increasingly serious, especially in the acidic soil region of southern China. Liming is a traditional and effective method to improve acidic soil. Manual spreading is a kind of traditional method of liming, but it is inefficient and has some side effects like skin damage of workers because of the corrosive property of lime. In order to solve the deficiencies of manual liming and compensate the technology gap of liming machine between domestic and overseas market, we designed a lime spreading machine which was able to be assembled with other agricultural machinery to become combined machine. The development of liming machine has great significance to improve liming efficiency and working conditions. This paper discussed the structure and working principle of the pros spiral lime spreading machine. The machine used the spread roller which was similar to the structure of pros spiral as working parts, used the overlapped waist-shaped hole as the lime spreading outlet, and controlled the waist-shaped hole overlapping area through adjusting assembly to adjust the lime spreading amount. Through experiment we determined the lime outlet size and the lime spreading roller's rotation speed of the lime spreading machine, and experiment results showed that: Firstly, when the lime spreading roller speed was below 125 turn per minute, for the same waist-shaped lime spreading outlet, the lime spreading amount per turn of lime spreading roller could be treated as a constant value, i.e. the spreading amount and lime spread roller's rotation speed were in a linear relationship; Secondly, when the number of lime spreading plate was 40, the hole was waist-shaped hole with the size of 25 mm*10 mm and the rotation speed of the roller was in 120 turn per minute, we got the lime spreading amount of 1 500 kg/h which met the maximum requirements of lime spreading. Considering the linear relationship between the lime spreading amount and the number of lime spreading hole, and the complex conditions after assembled with rotary cultivator, we increased the number of the waist-shaped hole and decreased the rotation speed of lime spreading roller meanwhile kept the lime spreading speed unchanged, and at last determined the lime spreading hole number to be 60 and the roller's rotation speed to be 80 turn per minute as the optimal scheme. We also analyzed the power consumption condition of the lime spreading process and calculated the total power consumption of the working process. Finally, the field test of the lime spreader was carried out, which was conducted in the dry paddy field. Field test results showed that, under the conditions of the lime spreading cultivator at a speed of 5 km per hour, the lime spreading roller at a speed of 80 turn per minute and the overlapping area of the lime spreading hole at maximum size, when the adjusting bar of adjusting mechanism was located in Location XIII, the lime spreading amount reached 1 566.7 kg per hectare. When the adjusting bar of adjusting mechanism were located in Location XII, X and VII, respectively, the lime spreading amounts met the demands of annual lime spreading amount for the first, second and third year, respectively; and when the adjusting bar was at Location II, lime spreading machine almost closed all the lime spreading holes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, as scientific research has been further explored, the health care functions of the Lycium barbarum (L. barbarum) in anti-oxidation, anti-aging, anti-fatigue, protecting liver, improving body immunity, eye protection and other aspects have been further confirmed. Its unique and nutrient-rich health function is recognized gradually in western countries, and the market demand of the L. barbarum is expanding each year. The L. barbarum blooms and bears fruit continuously during the growing season which begins in mid-May. Depending on the picking time around the year, the L. barbarum fruit can be divided into spring, summer and autumn fruit. In order to make dried L. barbarum keep good commodity characters, the L. barbarum is harvested at 80 percent maturity. The full bearing period of L. barbarum is from May to September every year, which is the picking peak of L. barbarum. It must be picked once about every 7 days. For centuries, the mechanized harvesting of L. barbarum has been a tough problem. Its harvesting has been artificial, which brings about low picking efficiency and high harvesting costs. With the continuous expansion of L. barbarum acreage, fruit picker has been increasingly scarce, which will be followed by rising picking costs. It's no doubt that the picking has become the bottleneck restricting the development of L. barbarum industry. Aiming at realizing the harvesting mechanization of L. barbarum and establishing the theoretical guidance and design basis for the L. barbarum picking machine, the vibration picking mechanism of L. barbarum plant's fruiting branches in picking was studied, the parameter optimization and simulation analysis was done to determine exciting force vector and rotational speed of driving wheel, and an experiment was conducted to prove the obtained rotational speed of driving wheel in this paper. First, we analyzed the working principle of the picking machine to get the vibration picking mechanism. The fruiting branches' model was simplified and the L. barbarum plant's fruiting branches' physical model and mathematical model were got, which were solved by equation solutions. We then obtained the forced vibration response of the fruiting branch and the forced vibration picking inertia force exerted on ripe and unripe fruits and flowers on each node. Second, 10 L. barbarum trees were selected as the test samples. We measured the binding force and mechanical parameters of the L. barbarum and fruiting branches, such as the number of ripe and unripe fruits and flowers, diameter, length, elastic modulus, damping ratio of fruiting branches, and node number. Based on the principle of successful picking which is the ripe can be picked and the other parts wouldn't be picked, the parameters were optimized, and the inertia force changes of the fruits and flowers with rotational speed were simulated with the MATLAB software. Simulation results showed the reasonable rotational speed was 2 868.84-2 871.21 r/min. Finally, rotational speeds of 7 levels which came from the interval and beyond the interval were selected in the experiment. Using a self-developed experimental L. barbarum picking machine, the test was conducted at planting base of L. barbarum of Ningxia Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, and the fruit distribution before and after picking was compared. Experiment result showed that reasonable rotational speed was 2 870 r/min, which is within the reasonable simulation interval of rotational speed. Under this rotational speed, picking efficiency of ripe L. barbarum was 815 grains per minute, the picking rate of ripe fruit was 86.70%, the picking rate of unripe fruit was 7.36%, and the picking rate of flower was 7.43%. The damage rate of fruit was 8.62%. The efficiency ratio of machine to worker was 5.43. Due to the actual picking environment, this result differs from simulation conclusion that the ripe is picked totally and none of the unripe and flowers is picked. The results can provide a reference for the development of L. barbarum vibration picking machines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sweet potato is a crop which is drought-resistant, tolerant of poor soil, and owns increasingly enormous potential. It is an important foodstuff, a raw material for starch industry, a kind of health food to prevent cancer and a new raw material for energy as well. The sweet potato planting area in China per year on average is usually 3 667 000 hectares, accounting for 45% of the world's planting area. As sweet potato vines are very long and broomy, the vines must be cleaned up before sweet potatoes are harvested, otherwise are unable to be harvested. Vine crushing and returning machine is usually the dominant form adopted to clean sweet potato vines internationally, but the problems existed in this type of machine were obvious such as low smashing proportion and more stubble residue on the top ridge. New problems have been brought by long stubble such as blocking, larger load and worse smooth working property. Aiming at these problems, the machinery and agronomy should be combined, in order to prove mechanical properties of sweet potato vine and stalk during harvest and working quality of sweet potato vine crushing and returning testing machine. In this paper, the types of fresh purple sweet potato Ningzi 1 and Ningzi 2 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province were regarded as the tested subject, the electronic universal testing machine, electric drying oven with forced convection, and sweet potato vine crushing and returning testing machine etc. were applied, and the change of moisture percentage and shear strength of sweet potato stalk during harvest were studied. The results showed that at the beginning of experience harvest period, when the percentage of moisture were 81.5% and 78.1%, the shear force were 90.1 and 94.8 N, respectively, during 18 testing days the moisture percentage of sweet potato stalk reduced by 14.8% and 13.97%, respectively, but the shear force of stalk increased by 36.3 and 37.5 N respectively, which showed that the moisture percentage of sweet potato stalk was lower and the shear force was larger as the growth time of plants went on. The internal relations between mechanical crushing quality and percentage of moisture, shear strength were revealed: during the testing period of 18 days, the qualified rates of vine's crushing length for sweet potato type Ningzi 1 and Ningzi 2 dropped by 6.3% and 6.7% respectively, stubble length on top ridge increased by 3.6 and 4.4 cm respectively, which showed that with the increasing of the growth period and the rising of stalk's shear force, the working quality of sweet potato vine crushing and returning machine declined. The quadratic function regression equations on the change between shearing force and moisture percentage of the two types of fresh purple sweet potatoes' stalk were obtained with Matlab when the percentage of moisture was 86.92%-70.08%, and the fitting coefficient of determination R² both reached above 0.99. From the point of increasing the quality of mechanical smashing and mechanical work, it was put forward that the most suitable time of mechanical crushing for the two kinds of purple sweet potatoes during harvest was about 6-8 days, which was a relatively short time. The results offer the direct basis for parameter design of new sweet potato vine crushing and returning testing machine such as machine speed, cutter linear velocity, and also provide the important reference for the selection of suitable harvest period and cultivation agronomic research that fits for machinery operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanical precision seed metering device is widely used in precision seeding technology because of its simple structure and uniform seed metering. Seed filling process is the key link of the whole operation process of seed metering device. The precision metering device is mainly divided into internal filling, side filling, external filling, and the combination of side filling and external filling according to the seed filling mode. In the operation process, the internal filling mode mainly completes the seeding operation through the process of type-hole filling and gravity clearing, and the seed motion parameters close to the type-hole directly affect the seeding quality of the machine. The rotary type-hole cotton precision seed metering device is a kind of mechanical precision seed metering device. In order to solve the problem of missing seed in the process of filling, the influence of the motion parameters of rotary type-hole cotton precision seed metering device on the filling performance by establishing the kinematic model of the seed filling process in this paper. Using the discrete element simulation software to analyze the speed change trend of cotton seed falling into the type-hole and the influence of seed wheel vibration frequency on seed group disturbance. Taking the vibration frequency of seed wheel, vibration offset angle of seed wheel and rotating speed of metering device as the test factors, and taking the qualified rate of seed spacing, replaying rate and missing rate as the test indexes, three factors and five levels of positive traffic rotation combined test are carried out to explore the influence of each factor on seed metering performance. Design expert 8.0.6 software is used to analyze the test results and optimize the regression model. Single factor simulation test results show that the instantaneous speed of cotton seed increases with the increase of the rotating speed of the seed wheel, the instantaneous speed of the cotton seed is less than that of the seed wheel when it is filled into the type-hole, the cotton seeds with lower relative speed have better filling effect. When the vibration frequency of the seed wheel is 7 Hz, the average value of the normal force of the seed group is the smallest, which is 0.75 N, at this time, the internal friction of the seed goup is the smallest, the cotton seed is easy to be taken by the type-hole, and the seed filling performance of the seed metering device is improved. The simulation results of quadratic regression general rotation combination show that when the rotating speed of the seed metering device is 12.59 r/min, the vibration offset angle of seed wheel is 8.06° and the vibration frequency of seed wheel is 6.08 Hz, the qualified rate of seed spacing reaches the maximum of 94.5%, and the leak seeding rate is 2.9%, the repaly rate is 3.3%. On this basis, the platform validation test was carried out with Xinluzao No.61 cotton seed as the test object. The test results showed that when the rotating speed of the seed metering device was 12 r/min, the maximum qualified rate of the seed spacing was 94.65%, the error between the rotating speed of the seed metering device and the simulation test is 5.4%, which verifies the accuracy of the simulation results. This study can provide a reference for the structural optimization of the key components of the rotary type-hole cotton precision metering device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Aiming at the problems of the poor quality of the hole shape formed by the transplanter will cause the seeding to tilt, when watermelon seedlings raised on pie-shaped compression substrate for transplanting. Opener parameters of hole-forming device in semi-automatic transplanter for watermelon seedlings raised on compression substrate is optimized to meet the agronomic requirements of transplanting compression substrate watermelon seedling and combining the characteristics of dryland transplanting machinery. Through analyzing the movement mechanism of the opener, this paper established the parameter equation of the planting hole. It was concluded that the depth of the hole-forming was the main factor affecting the longitudinal length of the upper part of the hole mouth. The Edinburgh Elasto-Plastic Cohesion Model, which can reflect the elastoplasticity and cohesiveness of soil. The simulation analysis of the hole-forming process of the opener was carried out by using the discrete element method. The rationality of the structure parameters and motion parameters of the opener was verified, and the hole-forming effect of different diameters of the small end of opener was explored at different theoretical depth of hole-forming. According to the simulation results, the diameter of the small end of opener was 60 mm and the theoretical depth of hole-forming was 65 mm. The bottom of the hole was relatively flat, effective depth of hole-forming was 51 mm. The upper longitudinal length of hole and the upper width of hole were relatively small. It was conducive to the growth of coated transplanted crops. In order to verify the accuracy of the above design method and the reliability of the operation of the hole-forming device, a prototype and 3 sets of opener with different small end diameters were trial-manufactured to carry out field experiments, and the upper longitudinal length of hole, upper width of hole and effective depth of hole-forming were measured. The results of the experiment combined with the simulation analysis showed that the upper longitudinal length of hole and the upper width of hole were increased with the increase of the theoretical depth of hole-forming. The upper longitudinal length of hole and the upper width of hole increased with the increase of the diameter of the small end of the opener. The influence of the diameter change of the small end of the opener on the upper longitudinal length of hole was weaker than the change of theoretical depth of hole-forming. The theoretical depth of hole-forming had a significant effect on the upper longitudinal length of hole. The larger the diameter of the small end of the opener, the more the upper width of hole increased as the theoretical depth of hole-forming. The minimum error between simulation result and the test result of upper longitudinal length of hole was 0.34%, the maximum was 12.78%, and the average error was 6.7%. The minimum error between the simulation result and test result of the upper width of hole was 7.23%, maximum was 20.87%, and average error was 12.33%. The minimum error between effective depth of hole-forming simulation results and test results was 1.79%, the maximum was 17.92%, and the average error was 10.46%. The research can provide a reference for the optimization and improvement of the opener. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent years, to meet the development requirements of green production and energy efficiency of modern agriculture, the closed-center load-sensing hydraulic system has been widely used in the domestic and overseas agricultural machinery because of its low energy consumption and strong adaptability. As a key power component of the hydraulic system of the modern agricultural equipment, the performance of the load-sensing variable pump plays an important role in the performance of the whole hydraulic system. At present, the domestic scholars have mainly concentrated in the optimization and characteristics analysis of hydraulic valve, while have done little about the hydraulic pump. Therefore, this paper focused on the mathematical modeling, performance simulation and testing of the load-sensing variable pump, which was composed of swashplate piston pump, plunger cylinder, pressure control valve, flow control valve, load feedback check valve, and so on. In order to better analyze the performance of the pump, the mathematical models of these parts were established by using the pressure-flow equation, flow continuity equation, force balance equation, and so on. Taking into account the effective travel range of the moving parts such as valve spool and swashplate, the nonlinear mathematical model of the load-sensing variable pump based on the boundary conditions was constructed by using the state space method. Then, the simulation model of the pump was established using MATLAB/Simulink based on the mathematical model. By using the fourth order Runge-Kutta algorithm, the steady-state and dynamic performances of the pump were simulated. At the steady state, the compensating pressure of the variable pump was about 1.6 MPa. And in the dynamic state, the outlet pressure and swashplate angle of the pump could respectively follow the step changes of the load and system flow very well, the adjustment time of which was about 0.4 and 0.5 s, respectively. The simulation results showed that the load-sensing variable pump could adjust the inclination angle of the swashplate in real time according to the required flow and pressure of the load, and thus had a good pressure-flow compensation characteristic. Finally, to verify the correctness of the mathematical model and the simulation analysis, an indoor test platform of the load-sensing hydraulic system was built, including hydraulic pump station, proportional control valve, proportional relief valve, flowmeter, pressure sensor, and so on. The dynamic performance test of the load-sensing variable pump was carried out by using the platform. Among them, the step change of the load pressure could be achieved by controlling the proportional valve’s opening pressure, while the step change in flow could be achieved by controlling the spool opening of the proportional relief valve. The test results showed that the load-sensitive pump could output its required flow when the proportional valve spool encountered a step change. And when the load made a step change, the outlet pressure of the variable pump changed almost synchronously with the load pressure. Compared with the simulation results, the steady-state error of the compensation pressure was about 0.1 MPa, which verified the correctness of the nonlinear mathematical model of the load-sensing variable pump. It can be seen that the output flow and pressure of the load-sensing variable pump can be adapted to the load in real time, thus effectively improving the efficiency of the hydraulic system and reducing the system heat, which meets the field work demands of the modern agricultural equipment operation unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Overlapped apples are common in natural scenes, and they can seriously affect the execution of picking task. Accurate segmentation of overlapped apples is one of the key problems that picking robot must solve. As the existing overlapped apples segmentation methods could not retain the contour of overlapped parts, a new method of segmenting overlapped apples was proposed in this paper. The steps of the algorithm were as follows: Firstly, the image was processed with morphological opening operation using disk-shaped structural element with the radius of 5 pixels so as to ensure the data information consistent in small area and to make the image more smooth. In order to distinguish the target and the background automatically, the image was then transformed from RGB color space into L*a*b color space. Then -means clustering method was used to segment images to extract apple region. Secondly, in order to extract accurate and entire contour of apple region and keep the contour of overlapped part simultaneously, Normalized Cut (Ncut) method was adopted. To ensure the accuracy of Ncut algorithm, the cluster number was chosen as 5. Thirdly, contour segmentation method was used to extract contour of each apple. The procedures of contour segmentation method were as follows: 1) The extracted contours were connected by simply using eroding operation in order to avoid disconnection at intersection of contours of 2 adjacent apples; 2) Refine the connected contour and search three cross point, then break off the contour at three cross point by assigning zero at three cross point, and 3 contours could be got; 3) Add the 2 contours whose bending directions were opposite, and this was the contour of unblocked apple and the other contour was the contour of blocked apple. Lastly, Spline interpolation method was used to reconstruct the contour of blocked apples. In order to verify the validity of this algorithm, 20 images of adjacent apples were used to conduct the experiment, and the result was compared with the comparison method. The comparison method is a method that uses the connection line of 2 concave points to segment overlapped apples, and then utilizes the Hough transform method to reconstruct the contour of apples. The experimental results showed that for unblocked apples in apple images, average segmentation error of the presented method was 3.15%, 7.73% less than that of comparison method (10.88%). Average overlap ratio of the presented method was 96.08% and was increased by 9.71% compared to comparison method (90.85%). In addition, this method could keep the complete contour information of unblocked apples and thus improved segmentation accuracy effectively. For blocked apples, average segmentation error and average overlap ratio were 5.24% and 93.81%, respectively. The segmentation error was decreased by 11.35% and average overlap ratio was increased by 12.74% compared to comparison method, which indicated that the method could reconstruct contour of blocked apples well. In conclusion, the presented algorithm is feasible to segment and reconstruct 2 overlapped apples without blocking by branches and leaves. However, for the images of overlapped apple blocked by branches and leaves, the images of more than 2 overlapped apples, and the images of 2 overlapped apples unblocked by branches and leaves with unclear contour at overlapped part, this method cannot complete the segmentation, and thus further research would be needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In order to mechanize the pesticide application of fence-type fruit tree, enhance the droplet deposition in canopy and improve work efficiency, a combined disc air-assisted orchard sprayer was developed. The mechanism design theory and virtual prototyping technology were adopted to design the disc atomizer and combined spray execution device. Single impeller was put to use in disc atomizer design, and the diameter of impeller was 0.4 m. Six-step motors were included in the combined spray execution device for lifting, rotating and contraction, the rotating and lifting speed were 4 rad/s and 0.12 m/s, respectively. The adjustable range of spray height was from 3 to 4 m, and the hemi-spray width was adjustable from 2 to 3 m. So it was suitable for the fence-type orchard with row spacing of from 4 to 6 m. The container's capacity was 1 000 L, and the spray volume was 51.63 L under the rated working pressure of 0.4 MPa. The distance of the run was up to 1 500 m, and the work efficiency was 2 times of single spray. The average spray volumes of the 8 nozzles of disc atomizer were 807, 894 and 1 020 mL/min under the pressures of 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 MPa respectively, while the standard deviations were 7.4, 8.2 and 7.8. It showed that spray volumes of different nozzles had small change, while spray volume increased with the increasing of spray pressure. The droplet diameters at 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 m along the direction of range were measured by DP-02 laser particle size analyzer under the pressures of 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 MPa. The droplet diameters were 140, 135 and 122 m in the distance of 2 m from the nozzle. The maximum diameter was in the distance of 4 m from the nozzle. The diameter decreased as the distance increased when the distance was greater than 4 m, while the diameter increased as the distance increased when the distance was less than 4 m. Spray deposition in vertical direction was mainly between 1 and 2 m above floor, and the maximum deposition was between 1.4 and 1.6 m. The data offered the basis to confirm the spray distance and guide the installation of disc atomizer. The fan property was tested and the performance curve graphic was drawn. Frequency transformer, torque meter and wind velocity indicator were used. The results showed that air volume was greater than 1 m³/s, and static pressure was greater than 60 Pa when the speed was greater than 1 300 r/min. The highest efficiency was 89% at 1 400 r/min. Execution time of each executive unit per stroke was 51.3 s for up and down, 50.5 s for stretch and draw and 26.5 s for rotation. The field experiment was conducted in Taizhou, which strictly followed the quality standard of air-assisted orchard sprayer (GB/T 24683-2009). The row space was 4 m × 2 m, the crown diameter of the tree was 0.7 m, and the height of the tree was 1.9 m. Three trees were randomly selected as sample trees. The intersection points of 3 horizontal layers and 3 vertical layers of each tree were set as sample points, with a total of 9 sample points for one tree. The result showed the pesticide was evenly distributed in the exterior of canopy, and the average coverage of the left and right were 55.13% and 52.60% respectively for the front of the leaf, and 6.57% and 7.14% respectively for the back of the leaf. The interior deposition was less than the exterior, but the spraying coverage was relatively even in the front and rear of the leaf, 12.77% and 9.74%, respectively. This study proposes a new machine of plant protection for the fence-type fruit tree, and also provides the reference for optimum design of orchard air-assisted sprayer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]