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Non-till farming has attracted increasing attention in developing sustainable agriculture, but the straws and the stubbles left over after harvest could block dispatch of fertilizer and seeds in seed drilling, which could detach the seeds and soil and result in nonuniform seed drilling both vertically and horizontally. Therefore, developing devices able to clean and crush the corn straw on seedbed before fertilization and seed drilling/spraying are demanded. However, the existing blade in such devices for laterally cutting the stubbles cannot completely clean and transport the stubble. The leftovers in soil make seed drilling problematic as they could block seed dispatch, increase energy consumption and, under certain circumstances, even make the sowing device unbale to operate. In order to resolve these problems, we designed a device to laterally cut and remove the stubbles from corn field. In this paper, we analyzed its efficacy in stubble clearance, soil disturbance, energy consumption, as well as conveying and throwing the cut/cleaned stubbles. The optimal structure of the stubble-cleaning blade and the working parameters of the device were calculated by taking the bending angle of the blade α, the transverse cutting edge B, and the angular velocity of the blade ω as determinants, and the stubble clearance ratio, soil disturbance ratio and equivalent energy consumption of the blade as quantitative indexes of its performance, using the three-factor and three-level orthogonal test and the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. The results showed that the stubble clearance ratio was significantly impacted by the bending angle, while the performance indexes were significantly impacted by the width and angular velocity of the blade. The factors that affected the performance of the device were ranked in the order of bending angle > transverse cutting edge > angular velocity. It was also found that soil disturbance ratio was mostly impacted by the transverse cutting edge, followed by the bending angle and the angular velocity, while the equivalent energy consumption was mostly affected the transverse cutting edge, followed by the bending angle and the velocity of the cutter tooth angle. The optimized results for the device operation were that when the operation speed was 7.2 km/h, the bending angle was 0.86 rad, the transverse cutting edge was 50 mm, and the angular velocity was 52 rad/s, the associated stubble clearance ratio was 94.3%, soil disturbance ratio was 54.3%, and the equivalent energy consumption was 3.4 kW. Under these conditions, clogging and straw entanglement did not occur. The results in this paper are helpful for designing devices to clear straw and stubbles left over after harvest in no-till farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to develop a more efficient and universal flower auto-transplantation technique, an auto-transplantation mechanism with the integrated function of seedling pick-up and transplanting has been designed. This mechanism involves gear driving and two transplanting arms of the same structure. The gear driving system is made up of one semi-circle gear, four oval planet gears and concave-convex lock-up arc. It aims to move with the non uniform speed through the operation of planet gears and pulling and imbedding of concave-convex lock-up arc. The auto-transplantation arm includes the transplanting claw, convex gear and removing gear-gap parts. It transfers the whirling operation of planet gear into straight-line operation of pick-up seedling. The manual finger scratching and planting were simulated by two pins at the end of the seedling arm. The auto-transplantation mechanism combines the pick-up and planting. The transplanting trajectory and the location of pick-up and planting were special. Thus, it is essential to design new mechanism accordance with the movement of pick-up clip and achieve “Double beak sharp” trajectory. In this paper, we designed a device of bouncing clip to lengthen the trajectory to realize the function of pick-up and planting, and it could facilitate the integration of the planting. At the same time, when the claw moves nearly to the pot seedling, the seedling needle was inserted into the soil with a certain angle of inclination, which could effectively avoid the injury of the seedlings and the interference with the seedling box. Based on the kinematics characteristics of the mechanism, a corresponding mathematic model was established, and the Visual Basic 6.0 software was used to optimize the mechanism parameters. The program was used to analyze the influence of the parameters of mechanism on the trajectory and attitude of the “Double beak sharp". Finally, the best group of mechanism parameters was selected, and then the 3D design and components assembly were carried out based on SolidWorks 2015 software. Importing the 3D model to Adams, the trajectories of seedling needle could be obtained by the kinematics simulation. Finally, the prototype test was carried out and the test trajectory of the prototype was obtained by the test platform. Through the platform, the operation process was recorded by high-speed camera. Therefore, the trajectories of seedling needle could be tracked through the Bestcam picture analysis software. The results were basically the same among the simulation trajectory, the test trajectory of the prototype and the theoretical trajectory, which verified the correctness and feasibility of the design in this paper. Experimental research was carried out using the prototype, “Marigold chrysanthemum” seedlings were selected in the experiment, the basic composition of the pot seedling combines the pearl cave and peat mud, with the water component of 46%, the seedling tray were eight lines and 16 rows, both the length and width of seedling were 31 mm, and depth was 43 mm, and the test seedlings of marigold were 35 days, with the average height of 10 cm. The rotation speed of the mechanism was set as 35 r/min, its mean efficiency was 70 stems per minute. The obtained seedling success rate was 97.27%, while the transplanting success rate was 77.62%. It reflected the practicality of the integrated transplanting mechanism; the research could provide a reference for the key technology of automatic transplanting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Castor is one of the top ten oil crops in the world, which has a extremely high economic value. For a long time, the harvesting of castor bean has relied on manual operations, so the development of the castor industry have been greatly restricted by the high labor intensity and low efficiency. At present, there are few studies on harvesting machinery of castor, and the mechanization of castor harvesting is still in the initial stage. The existing castor harvesting equipments are not suitable for the growth features of castor, which has the problems of high loss rate and high damage rate. In order to solve these problems, a brush-roller harvesting method was proposed in this paper. The harvesting principle of brush-roller castor harvester is that the castor capsules are separated from the plant by the brushing force caused from the brush wire. According to the physical characteristics and planting mode of castor, the picking mechanism of brush-roller castor harvester was designed. Firstly, the structure of the picking mechanism was introduced, the picking mechanism is mainly composed of crop divider, brush roller, screw conveyor, transfer case, et. Then, the kinematic and mechanical analysis of the working process of the mechanism was carried out, so as to determine the structural parameters and working parameters of each part of the picking mechanism. In order to improve the harvesting quality of castor, we conducted a field experiment in October 2020 in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. In the field experiment, Box-benhnken response surface design theory was used on the basis of single fator experiment to optimize the working parameters of the picking mechanism. The picking rate, the breakage rate and the impurity rate were used as the evaluation indexes of working quality. And the moving speed, the brush roller speed and the length of brush wire were taken as three factors influencing the working quality. The quadratic polynomial response surface regression model was established, and the influence of various factors on the response value was analyzed. From the regression model and variance analysis of regression equation, it could be seen that: lower moving speed, moderate brush roller speed, and shorter brush wire led to higher picking rate; Lower moving speed, lower brush roller speed, and longer brush wire led to lower breakage rate; Higher moving speed, lower brush roller speed, and longer brush wire led to lower impurity rate. The experiment results also showed that the significant effects of moving speed, length of brush wire and brush roller speed on increasing the picking rate were in a decreasing order. The significant effects of brush roller speed, length of brush wire and moving speed on reducing the breakage rate and the impurity rate were in a decreasing order. At the same time, the factors were multi-objective optimized comprehensively, and the optimization results were verified by experiments. The results showed that the optimum parameters were: 0.72 m/s for the moving speed, 372 r/min for the brush roller speed and 57 mm for the length of brush wire. Under these conditions, the picking rate was 91.36%, the breakage rate was 0.18%, and the impurity rate was 11.67%. The measured values of each index were in good agreement with the theoretical optimization values, which meant that the model established was reliable and could be used for optimization. The results can provide a reference for further improving the structure design and working parameters optimization of the brush-roller castor harvester. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale grain drying technology has a nearly 50 years of development history in China. There are concurrent flow dryer, countercurrent dryer, cross flow dryer and mixed flow dryer, which meet the actual needs in various fields. But compared with the similar foreign products, there are many defects on our grain dryer, such as low manufacturing technology, low level of automation and high energy consumption. The co-current flow dryer has the characteristics of dry uniformity, low unit heat consumption and high productivity. But there are some defects, such as poor control of drying quality, high cost of drying and environmental pollution. These shortcomings are not conducive to the sustainable development of agricultural production and ecological environment. Therefore, from the perspectives of the structure and the process of the high temperature grain dryer, combining energy saving with conservation of grain quality is the key to the development of modern grain drying technology. Generally, the form of air supply in large-scale grain dryer is positive pressure, with easy maintenance and adjustment. The negative pressure air supply technology is only used for small cycle dryers. In this paper, the negative pressure technology in the large-scale grain drying system was applied for the first time. Negative pressure drying can effectively solve the internal control problems of the drying process based on the theory of micro pressure. Negative pressure is beneficial to collect the grain dust, create excellent production environment and realize safe production. The losses of static pressure and dynamic pressure are relatively small in the process of negative pressure drying, and this technology can reduce power consumption, and is easier to realize intelligent control of air volume and air medium parameters. In order to reduce primary energy consumption and improve corn drying process capacity, combined with grain drying characteristics in cold region, 5HFS-10 type negative pressure grain dryer was designed based on the principle of negative pressure drying. This drying technology combined the multi-stage concurrent flow and countercurrent flow, and a set of advanced structure and control system were applied in this drier. The parallel dilated fan was combined with variable diameter cornute duct, the cold air quota regulation agencies were coordinated, online work parameters were real-time collected with multi sensors, the adaptive control system was adopted, and all of these completed the intelligent quality-guaranteeing drying production of the staple food crop. In this paper the calculation of drying parameters and structure parameters was carried out providing the theory basis for the comprehensive evaluation and the design of negative pressure dryer. Production test shows that the machine’s work performance is good, its energy saving is significant, and it has good drying quality, unit mass of low cost, high degree of automation, and so on. The deviation of the moisture of discharged grain is less than ±0.5% w.b. Compared with the traditional positive pressure air supply dryer, this dryer saves the power by more than 20%, and reduces the production cost by more than 12%. The operating performance can perfectly meet the requirements of farm drying and large-scale drying technique. It provides the theoretical basis for the development of energy-saving intelligent grain dryer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, the vegetable planted by seedling cultivation and transplantation accounts for more than 60% of the total vegetable planting. It has the advantages of high and stable yield, climate compensation and land use efficiency improvement. However, vegetable production belongs to labor-intensive industry, the increasingly serious problem of difficult employment leads to the fact that the labor cost of vegetable production accounts for more than 50% of the total cost of vegetable production, which has become the main factor restricting its development. Therefore, it is an inevitable trend for the sustainable development of vegetable industry to study the mechanization and automation of vegetable transplantation. Taking and dropping seedlings is a very important link in vegetable transplanting. In view of the problems of automatic transplanting of vegetable seedlings in China, such as the complex and easy to fail of seedling picking and throwing device, a kind of oblique inserting plug seedling taking and throwing device is designed in this paper. The principle of picking and seeding device was analyzed, and then the location of taking point, throwing point and any point in the process of picking seedlings were selected. The projection method was used to design the device, and the structure and working parameters were determined. The length of the frame, driven rod, connecting rod, driving rod and seedling clip were 122, 196, 80, 186 and 227 mm respectively. In order to ensure that the device has a good effect of taking and throwing seedlings, the tilt angle of the seedling tray and the parameters of the seedling clamping into the hole are designed, and the movement process is analyzed. The feasibility of the scheme is verified by comparing the simulation trace curve with the actual test trace curve. According to the mathematical model of the working process of seedling taking and throwing device, kinematics analysis and simulation are carried out, and the position of seeding taking and throwing, speed and acceleration curve of the seedling clamp endpoint are obtained, the design meets the requirements of automatic transplanting. Considering the factors affecting the effect of taking and throwing seedlings, the spring stiffness coefficient, rotational speed of the active rod and the inclination angle of the seedling tray are selected as the experimental factors, and the orthogonal experiment was carried out. The results show that the best effect is obtained when the spring stiffness coefficient is 500 N/m, the speed of the active rod is 12 r/min, and the inclination angle of the seedling tray is 45°. Repeated experiments were conducted with the optimum parameters, the results show that the broken rate of substrates is 3.13%, the expulsion rate of seedlings is 2.43%, the success rate of seedling taking and throwing is 94.44%, the reliability of the device is high. The design provides a reference for the study of full automatic transplanting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The soil-covering and press wheel are the main parts of the corn planter, and their performances are directly related to the growth and the output of the corn. The device with the functions of soil covering and soil compaction can improve the soil moisture content after planting and simplify the structure of machine. The squeeze-type coverer is a typical device with the functions of soil covering and soil compaction. But due to that the contact area is too small to bring the poor stability of soil-covering and soil-compacting during work process, the squeeze-type coverer is often used on no-till planter. A new type of soil-covering and soil-compacting device for corn planter was designed in this paper. The device was composed of 2 soil-covering-pressing wheels with cone-shaped structure, and realized the functions of soil-covering and soil-compacting depending on the extrusion force of soil produced by soil-covering-pressing wheel during planting. The main structure parameters of the soil-covering and soil-compacting device were determined through theoretical analysis and experiment of double-disk opener, which were mean diameter of 350 mm, width of the horizontal part of single soil-covering-pressing wheel of 20 mm, width of the inclined surface of single cover-press wheel of 70 mm, and the value range of horizontal interval of left and right soil-covering-pressing wheel of less than 29 mm. The leaning angle of soil-covering-pressing wheel was determined through theoretical analysis of soil-covering process based on the shape of soil furrows, which meant the leaning angle was about less than 20°. Based on the agronomic requirement of soil-compacting, the range of external load was about 609-790 N. Through analyzing, it was found that the external load, the horizontal interval between left and right soil-covering-pressing wheel and the leaning angle were the main influencing factors on the functions of soil-covering and soil-compacting of the device. Taking the 3 indices as the experimental factors using Design-Expert software, the Box-Benhnken experiments of 3 factors and 3 levels were conducted, and the results showed that the order of the influence of the factors on the soil compactness in the top 5 cm soil layer of the seed furrow from high to low was the external load, the horizontal interval between left and right soil-covering-pressing wheel and the leaning angle. The order of the influence of the factors on thickness of covering soil was the leaning angle, the load and the horizontal interval between left and right soil-covering-pressing wheel. The optimal parameter combination of the device was the external load of 900 N, the horizontal interval between left and right soil-covering-pressing wheel of 13 mm and the leaning angle of 16°. Verification testing indicated that the soil compactness in the top 5 cm soil layer of the seed furrow was (43.8±1.9) kPa, the coefficient of variation was 4.3%, and the thickness of covering soil was (32.9±2.3) mm with the coefficient of variation of 6.9%. The soil-covering and soil-compacting device designed in this paper has good performance of soil-covering, soil-compacting and working stability. This study can provide a reference for the design of planters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maize is one of the main crops in the Northeast China. The agronomic requirement of maize planting in this region is stubble cleaning and ridging before sowing. Stubble cleaning can crush crop straw, which could promote the growth speed of maize and increase the organic matter content in soil. Ridging can increase the surface area of the land, which is beneficial for improving the soil temperature. Transverse ridge can hold water from flowing away. High ridge can avoid the submergence of corn. Side deep fertilizing can supply abundant nutrient for maize seedlings, increase root length, and improve seedling growth. Most maize-growing regions in the Northeast China use small four-wheel tractors to clean stubble and ridge, and sow on the ridge with small seeders. As for the above model, the multiple field operations are needed, which always break the physical structure of soil, disturb soil layer and even lead to water consumption with low mechanical efficiency. The existing combined machines can not ridge and sow together, resulting in ridge damage and difficulties in row-follow. In terms of this problem, there is hardly combined equipment to fulfill the above tasks. In order to solve problems mentioned above, this paper designed 2BYMQF-4 maize stubble cleaning fertilization ridging seeder, which was suitable for the agronomic requirement (cleaning stubble, ridging, fertilizing and sowing in one time) in the Northeast China. By researching multiple ridging method, theoretical analysis of ridging and sowing was made by this paper. The multiple ridging method of this machine was divided into 5 steps: stubble cleaning and small ridging after rotary tillage; ditching, fertilizing and seed dropping; covering soil by double disks; hilling with ploughshare and compacting with broad width flexible compacting roll. This paper described the overall design of the machine, and determined the structure parameters and the working parameters of the main parts, such as the connecting mechanism, stubble cleaning device, sower unit and ridging device. The paper also described the working principles of the parallel quadrilateral adaptive connecting mechanism and the compensated suspension mechanism, as well as the mechanical structure and working principles of the precision planter unit, analyzed the stress under ideal condition by theoretical calculation, and made the finite element static force analysis of the ploughshare according to the calculation results. The paper calculated the power consumption of the track equipment and the power take-off shaft to analyze the power disposition, and analyzed longitudinal stability of the tractor mounted implement based on virtual prototype technology. According to this operation method, researchers made the test program and test method of maize stubble cleaning, ridging, fertilizing and seeding machine, and also carried out the field experiment on this machine based on the program and test method. Field experiment indicated that stubble crushing ratio reached 88.2% at the conventional working speed. The qualified rates of the ridging height, the width of ridging top and the distance between ridging rows were respectively 95%, 90% and 90%. The pass rate of average grain distance was over 92%, with the standard deviation of 43.65 and the coefficient of variation of 5.24. The average depths of seeds and fertilizer were respectively 56.22 and 114.36 mm, with the coefficients of variation of 10.07 and 10.28. The machine has the advantages of combined operation in maize stubble cleaning, ridging, fertilizing and seeding, such as simple operation, reasonable structure, safe and reliable work as well as high operation efficiency, which meets the design requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to better realize the combination of agricultural machinery and agronomy, the design of precision rice hill-drop drilling machine was further optimized and tested. The precision rice hill-drop drilling machine that was powered with high speed transplanter chassis was composed of frame, furrowing and ridging device, height and horizontal profiling mechanism system, power transmission system, seeding device and hydraulic lifting frame. It could meet the rice direct seeding agronomic requirements which are furrowing and ridging synchronously, adjustable sowing rate and hill space, optional row space, profiling seeding mode and stubble burying before seeding. The combined hole-type metering device included small and big type holes was used for the precision rice hill-drop drilling machine, so that it could meet the sowing rate requirement of conventional rice and hybrid rice simultaneously and adjust the seeding rate quickly. On the basis of the combination of agricultural machinery and agronomy as well as the experimental verification, the frame, reduction gearbox, horizontal profiling mechanism, height profiling system and installation angle of slide plate were optimized. The new frame could protect the main bar from being bended. The new reduction gearbox made the hill space to match the speed of the chassis more accurately and also could change the rotation direction to fit different kinds of chassis. The height and horizontal profiling mechanism made the seeding machine more floatable, so it could adapt more complicate ground. Furthermore, the related experiments proved that profiling system is conducive to the seedling emergence of rice. The seedling emergence rates of the rice varieties XS134 and PZTF, which were seeded by the precision rice hill-drop machine with horizontal profiling mechanism, were 7.8% and 8.7% higher than that without horizontal profiling mechanism, respectively. In order to protect the atmosphere environment, the government introduced the relevant policies and laws to prohibit the burning of straw, and promoted the comprehensive utilization of crop straw. Many farmers returned straw residue to field to improve soil fertility and reduce environmental pollution, but it could be more difficult for the direct seeding machine and rice transplanter working in the field as well. To overcome this difficulty, the stubble-burying seeding was studied. The angle of the slide board was confirmed as 4° by the experiment result, while the efficiency of stubble burying was 91.6% and the furrowing and ridging effect under 4° was relatively better than that under other degrees. In this paper, some verification tests involved the main technical indices of the seeding machine and its reliability. Results showed that, the pure work efficiency was 0.67 hm2/h, the qualified rate of hill space was up to 100%, the variable coefficient was as low as 2.5%, the qualified rate of the seeds number per hill reached 95% and the cavity rate was 0; furthermore, the variable coefficient of the consistency of seeding quantity per row and the stability of total seeding quantity were 3.8% and 1.5% respectively; after seeding with horizontal profiling mechanism, the height difference between the left and the right field surface was about 2.0 cm; more important, the average of assignment before first-time fault (MTTFF) was 30.4 hm2/h, and the validity reached up to 98.2%. Therefore, on the basis of these results which all meet the national standard and the requirements of the combination of agricultural machinery and agronomy, and the reduction gearbox makes the machine+ more universal. The performance of the optimized precision rice hill-drop drilling machine is reliable and has exciting application foreground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rice is the most important crop in China, which has the largest planting area, the highest per unit area yield and the most total output. The production scale of rice has important significance to the development of grain production safety. Solid ridge is important guarantee for irrigation and rice growth. It can improve the yield of grain crops and reduce the waste of water resources, which is conducive to the construction of standardized farmland in China. At present, the ridge are built still by manual labor in some regions. The ridge building by manual labor have some problems such as poor quality, long operation period, and repeated labor intensity. Ridging operation belongs to a part of tillage operation in the whole production process. With the development of paddy field mechanization, the paddy field machinery ridging technology has become the bottleneck problem for production. Paddy field mechanization ridging is constructed by agricultural machinery to meet the production requirements of rice irrigation and ridge technology. Some Chinese scientific research institutes and agricultural machinery enterprises have carried out researches and designed paddy field ridge machines. These machines take the soil on both sides through the plow or rotary blade and other parts, and compact soil to build ridge by double disc rolling, but they have shortcomings of heavy body, poor flexibility, high power consumption, and limits to the sampling position, which affect the follow-up planting and soil leveling operations. This kind of machine can not fully meet the actual production demands in China. In order to improve the quality and the efficiency of ridging operation in paddy field, and to reduce the labor intensity, the 1DSZ-350 type hanging unilateral rotary tillage compacting ridger was designed, in view of meeting the agronomic requirements of rice planting in the northeast region of China. The overall structure and working principle of the ridger were illustrated and analyzed. The structural design and the theoretical analysis were conducted for key components, such as partial traction hanging adaptive mechanism, rotary tillage ridging adjustable depth transmission assembly, rotary tillage soil- collecting roller assembly and compacting ridging circular assembly. To improve the working performance of ridger and to obtain the best operation parameters, the quadratic general rotary unitized design experiment was carried out with the forward speed and the rotational speed as the impact factors, and the average value of ridge density and the variation coefficient of ridge height as the response indices. Based on experimental data, a mathematical model was built by using the Design-expert 6.0.10 software, the experimental factors were optimized, and the best combination was achieved. Test results showed that the forward speed of the ridger was 1.33 km/h, the rotational speed was 525 r/min, and the average of ridge density was 2 160 kPa, the variation coefficient of ridge height was 4.01%. On the basis, the field test was carried out, and the test results showed that the ridger was characterized by its compact-sized reasonable structure and simple operation. And its ridge had good quality, which was solid and smooth and could meet the requirement of paddy field production. The research results in this paper can provide the theoretical basis and direction for the research of mechanical ridger and its key parts for paddy field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]