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20201
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Subject: Farm, Machinery and Power × Author: Annu Rani × Type: Thesis × Thesis Type: Ph.D ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Investigation on wear pattern of various makes of agricultural discs
    (G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand), 2020-09) Annu Rani; Singh, T.P.
    Mechanization of agriculture involves the use of different machineries in farming operation right from ploughing to marketing of produce. In underdeveloped countries like India, farmers require low cost machinery so they generally prefer locally available equipment. Tillage equipment such as disk harrow, which is used for both primary and secondary tillage, have become common in modern Indian agriculture as disc tillage implements are impressively applicable over a wide range of soil conditions. It has been seen that disc tillage implements imposes recurrent downtime and replacement cost on farmers as the farmers use locally available discs manufactured by small scale industries. The study has been undertaken to find the best suitable disc among the various commonly used makes available in Indian market and to estimate the life of each disc so the farmers can keep sufficient stock aforetime, thus reducing downtime and replacement cost. The agricultural discs have large surface area exposed to the abrasive medium i.e. soil and thus they are subjected to large abrasion due to the soil particles. An experiment was conducted to determine the wear of various makes (M1, M2, M3 and M4) of discs as weight reduction, radius reduction and thickness reduction in circular soil bin;and the effect of different soil (sand and silty-clay-loam), operating speed viz.2.5, 3.5 and 4.5 km/h and soil moisture content on wear was taken into consideration.The data obtained from the laboratory test was then compared to the field test conducted at soil moisture content of 12-14 % with 4.5 km/h forward speed and depth of operation as 10 cm. The test was conducted in rice harvested field with duration of work 100 hours. According to both field and laboratory conditions, mathematical correlations were developed relating wear to different operating conditions. The maximum wear was found at 6-8 percent moisture range in both sand and silty-clay-loam and the wear was found to increase with increase in moisture content for sand and decrease with increase in moisture content for silt clay loam. Along the radius, the maximum decrease in thickness was found at the edge of the discs and minimum at point H which is 12.5 cm away from the edge of the disc. The wear loss was found to increase with increase in speed of operation. The M4 (42.1 HRC) make of disc found better in circular soil bin due to minimum wear. It was observed that in field conditions the cumulative wear (in terms of weight loss) was 1.79, 1.75, 1.85 and 3.49 times more than the laboratory conditions for discs M1, M2, M3 and M4, respectively. In terms of radius reduction, the wear was 1.89, 1.72, 1.61 and 1.79 times more whereas in terms of thickness reduction, the wear was 2.26, 2.19, 2.24 and 2.27 times more at grid point A to 0.585, 0.535, 0.488 and 0.429 times more at grid point H in the field test than the laboratory test for discs M1, M2, M3 and M4, respectively. This increase in wear may be due to the wide range of abrasives available in the actual field condition and more compactness. The disk of make (42.1 HRC), speed 2.5 km/h and moisture content 0-2 percent were selected as optimum for sand with desirability of 0.99. The disk of make (42.1 HRC), speed 2.5 km/h and moisture content 12-14 percentwere selected as optimum for silty-clay-loam with desirability of 0.998. The make of disc M4 (42.1 HRC) was selected as optimum for field soil. The weight loss, radius reduction and thickness reduction obtained at optimal condition were in good agreement with the predicted value obtained the optimization model. The life of the discs in number of working hourswas calculated by the developed modelkeepingminimum allowable radius up to 228.6 mm and the working life of discs M1 (36.3 HRC), M2 (38.1 HRC), M3 (41.5 HRC) and M4 (42.1 HRC) were calculated as 423.86, 585.51, 950.64 and 1329.4 hours respectively. Based on the study, the make M4 showing minimum wear and maximum working life was selected as the best suitable for farmers followed by M3, M2 and M1.