INMATEH - Agricultural Engineering

19-26

Authors: Changbin, He; Yong, You; Decheng, Wang; Gang, He; Hongjian, Wu; Bingnan, Ye

Novel tillage tools causing minimizing surface vegetation deterioration are desired in degraded natural grassland mechanical restoration technology development. This paper attempted to study the effect of tine geometry in its vertical movement on penetration resistance. Four very narrow tines were defined (i.e. rectangle, triangle, crescent and mososeries) based on the geometry of the cutting edge, a special test unit was manufactured as well. Field experiments were conducted on natural grassland. The effects of tine geometry and contact surface area on soil penetration resistance were investigated and surface disturbance obtained. Results indicated that the tendencies of penetration resistance varied with the working depth or contact surface area, and showed differences between the four tines affected by different cutting-edge geometries. The crescent tine obtained the highest penetration resistance as compared to the others, and the mososeries tine got the lowest value. Penetration resistances of all the tines increased with the attack surface area with an exponential function (R2≥0.94) or a power function (R2≥0.95) respectively, depending on the penetration angle equalling 90° or being less than 90°, nonlinear tendency with penetration depth. It could be concluded that penetration resistance was influenced a lot by the tine geometry parameters such as contact surface area and penetration angle. The cutting edge of the tine with continuous acute penetration angle that could obtain lower resistance and stable force variation curve was more suitable for operation on natural grassland.

33-40

Authors: Bulgakov, V.; Ivanovs, S.; Pascuzzi, S.; Boris, А.; Ihnatiev, Ye

A method is proposed for the assessment of the effect of the soil surface irregularities upon the loss of mass and the residues of the leafy tops during the sugar beet harvesting process. A new mathematical model is constructed and dependences of the loss of mass and the top residues are obtained depending on the distribution parameters of the soil surface irregularities. The established dependences of the loss of the root crop mass and the residues of the leafy tops on the root crops depending on the statistical distribution parameters of the soil surface irregularities and the cutting height of the tops without a tracer allowed justification of an agrotechnically acceptable level of mathematical expectation of the soil surface irregularities and the cutting height of the root crops without a tracer.

49-58

Authors: Anlan, Ding; Xuhui, Zhang; Xiuguo, Zou; Yan, Qian; Heyang, Yao; Shikai, Zhang; Yuning, Wei

Temperature is a very important factor in the breeding of yellow feather broilers. Researching the group behaviour of yellow feather broilers under heat stress can help farmers take the corresponding measures to reduce the heat stress of broilers and improve production performance. In this paper, several traditional methods have been employed to detect and locate the broilers. These methods are highly interfered by the background whose colour is similar to broilers, thereby making it difficult to accurately locate the broilers. Meanwhile, although the algorithm YOLOv3 can precisely segment and locate the broilers, it has the disadvantages of incomplete detection and low detection confidence rate. Finally, this paper applies the neural architecture search and transfer learning to train the pre-processed training set, and obtains a detection model with a recognition accuracy of 83%. Then this model is used to process the images under heat stress at every 30 s so as to obtain the distribution of the broilers at each moment. Based on the results, the liveness and distribution characteristics of the broilers are analyzed. The analysis results show that when heat stress occurs, the broilers mainly gather at the vent; that when the temperature further rises above 30°C, the proportion of broilers at the vent increases from 53.3% to 67.3% on average; and that the activity index of the broilers decreases by 22.54% within an average of 3 h after the temperature rises to 30°C.

69-76

Authors: Golub, G.A.; Chuba, V.V.; Kukharets, S.M.; Yarosh, Y.D.; Tsyvenkova, N.;

The article provides the mathematical model of formation of a track depth depending on the size of vertical loading of a machine-tractor unit wheel, the structural parameters of the wheel and the soil properties. Based on the developed mathematical model, the experimental data of wheel-soil interaction and the soil properties, the track formation process in the soil depending on the pressure created by the wheel in a zone of contact with soil is proved. The analysis of the process of forming the track allows us to conclude that the intensity of track formation decreases with the increase in the wheel-ground interaction time.

93-100

Authors: Voicu, Gh.; Moise, V.; Popa, L.; Lazea, M.; Tudor, P.; Niculae, L.; Polena, A.;

In this paper, the structural and kinematic analysis of the mechanism of a municipal waste pressing system is made. The mechanism works in four phases. Two of the phases represent the operation itself, and two phases are for bringing the mechanism into pressing position. For the modules of which the actuation mechanism is constituted, kinematic calculation procedures have been drawn up, procedures that have been accessed by a main computing program. The results obtained were transposed graphically in the form of diagrams to give a clearer picture of the kinematic parameters of the mechanism elements.

111-118

Authors: Yan, Yang; Zhongyu, Chen; Fang, Ma; Yuansheng, Wang; Yongzhe, Shen

Considering the problems of current intertillage deep fertilizer applicators such as insufficient topdressing depth and poor adaptability in ridge forming, this paper designs a 3ZFS-520 intertillage deep fertilizer applicator by making some improvements to the deep application shovel and hiller. With a lengthened and narrowed deep application shovel and optimized penetration angle, clearance angle and curvature radius, this applicator experiences reduced working resistance and soil disturbance while increasing the fertilizing depth, and has enhanced adaptability in ridge forming and achieves better ridge forming effects through the integration of the hilling shovel and the hiller with adjustable extent. Test results show that, the 3ZFS-520 intertillage fertilizer applicator can reach a fertilization depth of 20cm with good ridge forming effects, strong applicability and adaptability, and stable working performance, and thus can meet the requirements set by the national standard.

125-132

Authors: Hongwen, Yan; Qingliang, Cui; Xuefeng, Deng;

This paper studied the loss rate of oats in the process of cleaning from the perspective of image processing. The sample was divided into group a that contained no impurities and group b that contained impurities. Otsu method was used to segment the oat kernels, with the recognition rate reaching 94.20%, and morphological opening was used for the openings appearing during the segmentation process for filling, while watershed segmentation algorithm was used for segmentation of adhesion area, with the recognition rate reaching 98.50%. For group b, the area method was used to identify and separate the impurities. Through statistical analysis, the area threshold was 600 pixels, and impurities could be removed without excessive segmentation. The estimated 5 g-sample loss rate in group a was 2.08%, which met requirements, so 5 g-sample was selected in group b, and it was calculated that the estimated loss rate of group b was 2.60%, The study showed that having good effect on image processing with less adhesion after cleaning, the algorithm could provide theoretical and methodological support for on-line monitoring of loss rate during oats cleaning.

141-150

Authors: Wang, Shengsheng; Ji, Jiangtao; Geng, Lingxin;

In order to meet the requirements of peanut pods cleaning by the pick-up peanut combine harvester, and enhance the processing ability of branches, leaves, broken stalks and hard fruit stalks of the cleaning system, a kind of sieve-roll combined peanut pods cleaning device was designed based on the analysis of material cleaning characteristics. It mainly includes key components, such as cross flow fan, vibrating screen and separation roller. The force and movement state of the picking peanut extraction on the sieve surface and the separation roller were analysed. Through field loading test and verification, when the vibration screen width is 1200 mm, the crank speed is 650 rpm, the cross flow fan speed is 920 rpm, the separation roll speed is 410 rpm, the separation roll gap is 3 mm, then the peanut pod containing impurities rate is 1.52% and the loss rate is 0.64%, which meets the national industry standards.

169-180

Authors: Jianguo, Yan; Chunguang, Wang; Shengshi, Xie; Lijuan, Wang;

How to accurately and efficiently measure the profiles of the terrain on which agricultural machines operate has been an ongoing research topic. In this study, a surface profiling apparatus (profiler) was developed to measure agricultural terrain profiles along parallel tracks. The profiler is mainly composed of sensor frames, an RTK-GNSS system (Real Time Kinematics-Global Navigation Satellite Systems), laser sensors, an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensor and a data acquisition system. Along with a full description of how the terrain profiles were produced, a methodology to compensate for the tractor motion was included in the sensor data analysis. In field profiling validation, two trapezoidal bumps with known dimensions were used to assess the ability of the terrain profiler to reproduce the vertical profiles of the bumps, resulting in root mean square error (RMSE) of 3.6-4.7 mm and 4.5-5.1 mm with profiling speeds of 1.02 and 2.56 km/h, respectively. In addition, a validation test was also conducted on an asphalt road by profiling a flat road with the measuring wheels of the profiler rolling on the flat section but with the tractor wheels driving over a trapezoidal bump to excite the tractor pitch and roll motion. The measured profiles then also exhibited a flat road, which showed the ability of the profiler to remove the tractor motion from the profiling measurements.

189-196

Authors: Kharytonov, M.M.; Martynova, N.V.; Tokar, A.V.; Rula, I.V., Babenko, M.G.; Bagorka, M.O.;

Ukrainian and American sweet sorghum hybrids were studied as raw material under reclaimed lands conditions in the southeast Ukraine. Among the cultivars in the range of hemicellulose destruction the highest reactivity was recorded for American hybrids, whereas the process of cellulose decomposition was most active in Ukrainian hybrids. Thermogravimetry (TG) curves of Ukrainian hybrids were more differed for plants grown on loess like loam comparative with American hybrids. The molecular structure of sweet sorghum lignin is represented by the spatially hindered hydroxyl groups of alcohol and phenolic type with the strength hydrogen bonding between some other structural fragments of macromolecules, ordinary carbon-oxygen bonds of metoxyl groups, and double carbon-carbon bonds.

209-219

Authors: Yuanxi, Zhang; Ye, Tian; Change, Zheng; Dong, Zhao; Po, Gao; Ke, Duan

Autonomous harvesting and evaluation of apples reduce the labour cost. Segmentation of apple point clouds from consumer-grade RGB-D camera is the most important and challenging step in the harvesting process due to the complex structure of apple trees. This paper put forward a segmentation method of apple point clouds based on regions of interest (ROI) in RGB images. Firstly, an annotated RGB dataset of apple trees was built and applied to train the optimized Faster R-CNN to locate ROI containing apples in RGB images. Secondly, the relationship between RGB images and depth images was built to roughly segment the apple point clouds by ROI. Finally, the quality control procedure (QCP) was proposed to improve the quality of segmented apple point clouds. Images for training mainly included two lighting condition, two colours and three apple varieties in orchard, making this method more suitable for practical applications. QCP performed well in filtering noise points and achieved Purity as 96.7% and 96.2% for red and green apples, respectively. Through the comparison method, experimental results indicated that the segmentation method based on ROI is more effective and accurate for red and green apples in orchard. The segmentation method of point clouds based on ROI has great potential for segmentation of point clouds in unstructured scenes.

227-236

Authors: Wang, Juxia ; Zheng, Decong ; Cui, Qingliang; Xu, Shuanghua; Jiang Bingyao;

Fruit and vegetable peels exert a protective effect on fruits as constituent parts of the outermost tissue and their properties are of great importance to reducing fruit and vegetable mechanical injury. Four kinds of fruit and vegetable peels such as Nagafu apple, Crisp pear, Tainong mango and long eggplant were chosen to perform longitudinal and transverse tests of tensile property by means of electronic universal testing machine. Stress-strain curve, tensile strength, elastic modulus and fracture strain of peels were obtained; and the microstructures of four kinds of peels were scanned using an electron microscope (SEM). The results indicated that cubic polynomials proved superior for quantifying the stress-strain non-linear relationship of peels and the fitting error of tensile strength is less than 10 parts per thousand. Tensile strength, elastic modulus and fracture strain of peels were different in the case of different fruits and vegetables cultivated and different parts of the same peel; fruit and vegetable peels belong to anisotropic heterogeneous materials and have certain strength. The mean values of tensile strength and fracture strain of the long eggplant peel are the biggest in four kinds of peels and that of elastic modulus of Nagafu apple peel is the largest; long eggplant and Nagafu apple peels had better resistance to damage sensibility than Crisp pear peel. The bearing capacity of the peels depends on the number, width and distribution of microcracks on the surface, and the shape of the epidermal cells and fruit dot on peels; the number of microcracks is bigger and the width of microcracks is wider, the tensile strength is smaller and the elastic modulus of peel is bigger with the slippage increase of epidermis cells. This study provides basic technical parameters for mechanical equipment design for fruit and vegetable during harvesting, processing, packaging, storing and transporting and builds the correlations between macro-mechanics properties and microstructures of fruit and vegetable peels.

245-252

Authors: Cujbescu, D.; Ungureanu, N.; Vlăduț, V.; Persu, C.; Oprescu, M.R.; Gheorghiță, N.E.

In the past few decades, size and weight of agricultural machinery have increased significantly, and as a consequence, the severity and depth to which the stress is transmitted into agricultural soil have increased. The objective of experimental determinations was to study the influence of some factors characteristic to compaction: tire inflation pressure, wheel load and contact pressure on the contact area between tire and soil, as well as 2D and 3D mapping of pressure distribution in the footprint. The front tire of the U445 Romanian agricultural tractor was tested at five tire inflation pressures: 100, 150, 200, 250 and 300 kPa, obtaining contact areas between 0.0252 – 0.0349 m2 and contact pressures between 98 - 136 kPa.

263-277

Authors: Caba, I.L.; Laza, E.A.; Constantinescu, M.; Radu, O.D.; Boiu-Sicuia, O.A.; Popescu, C.;

In the process of harvesting fibrous fodder an important and negligible requirement is the appropriate shredding of the fiber feed directly or indirectly into the composition of animal feed, whether it be fresh fodder, high moisture or fodder feed or even dried. The degree of comminution of feeding stuffs decisively influences the speed of assimilation by animals of the administered feed, implicitly their weight gain, the profitability of the respective cattle farm and not only. In the paper are presented the possibilities of technically obtaining a finest shredding of fibrous fodder, especially by using multirow knives in the feed channel of self-loading hay trailer. However, these technical solutions also have certain disadvantages in the daily operation of such machines.