Dynamic balancing of cleaning unit used in agricultural thresher using Jaya algorithm

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose the dynamically balanced mechanism for cleaning unit used in the agricultural thresher machine using the system of point masses. Design/methodology/approach The cleaning unit works on crank-rocker Grashof mechanism. To balance the mechanism, the shaking forces and shaking moments are minimized by optimizing the mass distribution of links using the dynamically equivalent system of point masses. The point mass parameters are taken as the design variables. Then, the optimization problem is solved using Jaya algorithm and genetic algorithm (GA) under suitable design constraints. Findings The mass, center of mass and inertias of each link are calculated using optimum design variables. These optimum parameters improve the dynamic performance of the cleaning unit. Originality/value The proposed methodology is tested through the standard four-bar mechanism taken from literature and also applied to the existing cleaning mechanism of the thresher machine. It is observed that the Jaya algorithm is computationally more efficient than the GA. The dynamic analysis of the proposed mechanism is simulated using ADAMS software.