Development of a Cassava Harvester

Cassava is a major source of food and raw material for domestic and industrial uses in Nigeria. Consequently, the technologies involved in its cultivation from planting to harvesting require proper development. This paper reports the development of a labour-saving technology for harvesting cassava using standard procedures for designing soil engaging implements. Locally available materials were also used in the fabrication of the harvester. Results of trial tests indicate a digging efficiency of 58.9%, fuel consumption of 16 l/ha, field capacity of 0.11 ha/hr, field efficiency of 67.9% and root damage of 43.03%. The total cost of fabricating the machine was 184,000 naira only. Further tests under various soil and operational conditions for improvement and optimization were recommended for the purpose of patenting for commercialization.

Design and analysis of biomimetics based excavator bucket and tooth

Within the scope of this paper, various bucket tooth designs and a biomimetic bucket design were created in order to produce a solution on digging efficiency which is one of the general problems of construction machines. These designs were inspired by giant anteater and American badger front claws. The inspiration aspect was diversified by integrating the paw and claw curves of the giant anteater and by bringing American badger claws into the design in different ways. Furhermore, the designed biomimetic bucket alternatives were compared between each other and the standard bucket equipment used in the market by making a computer aided static analysis. The compared criteria were the equivalent stress and total deformation formed on the bucket itself, the excavation equipment and the excavated soil. According to the analysis results, when the bucket tooth named P2 is mounted to the standard bucket, it has 42% lower Von-Mises stress on than standard bucket tooth. Additionally, it is exposed 4,7% less total deformation than standard tooth. Also, in terms of maximum Von-Mises stress formed on the soil model, P2 causes 17,5% greater stress than the standard bucket tooth.

Performance Evaluation of Digger for Ginger Crop

The ginger (Zingiber officinale) rhizome is harvested manually by different types of spade, fork or bullock drawn plow. These methods consume more time, cause drudgery, losses and low field capacity. Therefore a tractor drawn digger was evaluated for ginger crop. The performance parameters (exposed, cut, bruised and digging efficiency) of the digger were studied at 3 forward speeds and 3 blade angles. The performance of the digger was found satisfactory in respect of digging efficiency of 98.01%, and undug crop of 2.38 % at an average depth of operation of 15.75 cm. The damage was 1.98 per cent which was much low as compared to manual digging of ginger crop (9.73%). The machine takes 7.4 hours to dig one-hectare area of ginger crop with field efficiency of 87.82%.

Yield and Economic Response of Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) Cultivars to Prohexadione Calcium in Large-Plot Trials in Georgia

Prohexadione calcium, a plant growth regulator, has been used on virginia market type peanut cultivars for many years to manage excessive vine growth and improve digging efficiency. Prohexadione calcium has not been widely used on runner market type cultivars due to their slower growth habit and sporadic yield response at the labeled rate until recent research showed lower use rates of prohexadione calcium provided similar vine control and enhanced yield response. Large plot experiments were conducted in Colquitt county at the Darrell Williams Research Farm on the Sun Belt Ag Expo to quantify yield and market grade quality and economics of using prohexadione calcium at 105 g a.i./ha on six runner type cultivars. Prohexadione calcium was applied twice during the growing season. The first application was made when 50% or greater of lateral vines from adjacent rows were touching. A second application of each treatment was applied 14d after the first application. The runner type cultivars were Georgia-06G, Georgia-12Y, Georgia-13M, Georgia-14N, TUFRunner TM -297, and TUFRunner TM -511. Similar large-plot experiments were conducted on farms in Baker and Early counties evaluating yield and economic response of prohexadione calcium on Georgia-06G. A non-treated control was used in all experiments. Prohexadione calcium increased pod yield in all experiments ranging from 450 to 650 kg/ha compared to the non-treated control with response similar across cultivars. Prohexadione calcium reduced the dollar value per metric ton (DVMT) as a result of lowering total sound mature kernel (%TSMK) percentages up to 3 points. The higher yields obtained for the prohexadione calcium-treated peanut provided higher gross dollar value return/ha (GDR) in all experiments and higher gross dollar value return/ha above treatment cost (GDRAT) in the on-farm trials. Therefore, prohexadione calcium at 105 g/ha applied twice on runner market type peanut is warranted to improve yield and financial return when excessive vine growth is a concern.

Optimization of variables of a digger for digging of carrot crops

In India, most of root crop is harvested manually and it consumes high labour and time for harvesting. The optimization of a tractor operated digger was evaluated at farmer’s field for the carrot crop. The digger was optimized for forward speeds of 2.2, 2.7 and 3.2 km h-1 and the rake angles of blade as 170, 200 and 230. The parameters viz., digging efficiency, undug, cut, bruised and exposed percentage was optimized as per the experiment. The performance of the digger was found to be best at a speed of 2.2 km/ hr and blade angle of 23 degree with a The digging efficiency, cut percentage, exposed percentage and bruised percentage of carrot crop was found to be 100 , 46.2, 92.12 and 28 %, respectively. The capacity of the machine was 0.18 ha/h. The break-even point for digger was 35.14 hour per year. The payback period of digger was 0.24 year.

Rock Breaking Performance of TBM Disc Cutter Assisted by High-Pressure Water Jet

A high-pressure water jet can break rock efficiently, which is of great potential to overcome the problems of a tunnel boring machine (TBM) in full-face hard rock tunnel digging, such as low digging efficiency and high disc cutter wear rate. Therefore, this paper presented a new tunneling method that is a TBM coupled with a high-pressure water jet. The rock failure mechanism under the coupled forces of a disc cutter and water jet was analyzed at first. Then, the finite element method (FEM) and smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method were used to establish a numerical model of rock broken by the disc cutter and water jet. Effects of parameters on rock breaking performance were studied based on the numerical model. Moreover, an experiment of the water jet cutting marble was carried out to verify the reliability of the numerical simulation. Results showed that the high-pressure water jet can increase the TBM digging efficiency and decrease the forces and wear rate of the disc cutter. The optimum nozzle diameter is 1.5 mm, while the optimum jet velocity is 224.5 m/s in this simulation. The results can provide theoretical guidance and data support for designing the most efficient system of a TBM with a water jet for digging a full-face hard rock tunnel.

Smart Turmeric Harvester

Turmeric is a very important spice in India, which produces nearly the world’s crop and uses 80% of it. Harvesting is the process of gathering ripened crops from the field. The general practice of harvesting is to dig out the rhizome manually with the help of hand tools. This type of harvesting causes damage to rhizomes. It is a difficult task for the farmers to get the required labor force during the harvesting season. Delay in the harvesting process results loss in the yield and also the quality of rhizomes is affected adversely. So, it is necessitate the need to develop a suitable mechanical harvester for turmeric, which helps farmer to harvest turmeric with minimum losses within a specific time by reducing the human effort as compared to manual effort. This machine consists of digging blade, wheel, motor and blade driving unit. The machine starts moving as soon as the device is powered up. This harvesting technique leads to the development of mini tractor in order to reduce the efforts of human beings and also it increases the digging efficiency.

Optimization of Performance Parameters of Root Crop Digger for Potato Crop

This study aimed to evaluate the root crop digger for digging of the potato crop at the farmer’s field. The digger was tested at three levels of forward speeds (2.3, 2.8 and 3.3 kmh-1) and three levels of rake angles (170, 200, and 230). The experiment was replicated three times for the performance parameters of exposed,undug, cut, bruised percentage and the digging efficiency. The best performance of the digger was obtained at forward speed 2.3 km h-1 and blade angle 230 for potato crop at which the exposed, undug, cut, bruised percentage and the digging efficiency was found to be 90.62,2.10, 1.71, 2.48 and 97.90 per cent, respectively. About 54% savings in cost of digging could be achieved using digger compared to manual digging involving labour.