Design and Experiment of Oil-Electric Hybrid Air-Suction Sorghum Plot Seeder

To tackle the issues of low seeding accuracy and seed injury caused by the seeders utilized at a small scale and in the plot seeding of sorghum in mountainous or hilly regions, this study presents the design of an oil–electric hybrid air suction sorghum plot seeder. The main working parts of the see...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Agriculture (Basel) 2024-03, Vol.14 (3), p.432
Main Authors: Yuan, Xinyu, Huang, Caojun, Tao, Guixiang, Yi, Shujuan, Li, Yifei
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Design
Field tests
Hybrid vehicles
Microcomputers
Monitoring
Oils & fats
Optimization
Parameters
plot seeder
Pressure chambers
seed-metering device
Seeders
Seeding
Seeds
Sorghum
Suction
test
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:To tackle the issues of low seeding accuracy and seed injury caused by the seeders utilized at a small scale and in the plot seeding of sorghum in mountainous or hilly regions, this study presents the design of an oil–electric hybrid air suction sorghum plot seeder. The main working parts of the seeder are described, and the performance of the seed-mixing device is simulated using EDEM software. An oil–electric hybrid drive mode is used to provide power for operation and to the seed-metering device and fan. Additionally, a sowing control and monitoring system is designed using a single-chip microcomputer controller to ensure uniform plant spacing at different forward speeds. A multi-factor experiment is conducted using the central synthesis method to determine the optimal operating parameters of the seed-metering device through bench tests. The results show that a profile hole diameter of 2.5 mm on the seed tray, a negative-pressure chamber vacuum of 8.0 kPa, and a seed-metering device speed of 28 r/min result in a 95.95% pass rate, 0.5% missing rate, and 3.55% reseeding rate. The deviation between the experimental and analytical results that validate the optimum parameters is kept within acceptable limits. Field tests are conducted at different forward speeds using the optimum parameter combinations, and a comparison is made with the widely used duckbill planter. The results show pass, missing, and reseeding rates of 94.41%, 2.3%, and 3.29%, respectively. The missing monitoring error is less than 7.19%. All of the indices of the oil–electric hybrid air suction sorghum plot seeder are superior to those of the duckbill planter; thus, it fulfills the agronomic requirements for seeding a sorghum plot.
ISSN:2077-0472
2077-0472
DOI:10.3390/agriculture14030432