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2020 - 20213
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Subject: Farm, Machinery and Power × End date: 2021 × Start date: 2020 × Type: Thesis × Thesis Type: M.Tech. ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Studies on performance evaluation of battery-cum-manually operated boom sprayer under lab and field condition
    (G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand), 2021-11) Ayush; Arun Kumar
    Plant protection activities are most important practices during crop production. The application of fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides is one of the most recurrent and significant tasks in agriculture. Conventional agricultural spraying techniques have made the inconsistency between economic growth and environmental protection in agricultural production. For pesticide application,the parameters like area of the plant canopy, area of a plant leaf, height of the crop, and volume of plants related to plant protection product applications are very important for obtaining better results.Common plant protection equipments include Knapsack sprayers (manual and power operated), foot sprayer, tractor mounted sprayer in India. Most of the sprayers spray chemical from the top of the plant which causes improper spray distribution in case of crops with dense or medium canopy. The pest and insets present inside the canopy and under the leaves are not affected by this spray which leads to infestation and damage even after spraying. Several problems due to use of conventional backpack sprayers arise. Fatigue is produced to the operator due to carry of heavyweight backpack sprayer for a long time. For reducing the above problem, it was felt to develop and modify low cost battery cum manually operated boom sprayer. It was suitable for small land holding farmers and had low cost of operation. The performance of the modified sprayer was evaluated in both laboratory and field condition to ensure that the objectives are fulfilled. Under laboratory conditions, sprayer was tested in both manual and battery mode of operation. The independent parameters for lab test were nozzle type (flat fan), stroke length (full and medium), speed of operation (1, 1.5 and 2 km/h), nozzle height (300 mm), and level of tank (1/4th ,1/2th, 3/4th and full). The boom sprayer performance evaluation was evaluated in the Dept. of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering on the concrete surface and discharge rate as well as pressure was measured. The modified boom sprayer should be operated at 1 to 1.5 km/h speed of travel at any selected level of tank at full stroke length (i.e. 45 mm) in manual mode operation. The machine was tested in the field on turmeric crop at three different speeds (1, 1.5 and 2 km/h). The water sensitive paper were tagged at the different positions of the plant canopy and to check their percentage coverage, volume median diameter, image area, deposits/cm2 and deposition μL/cm2, Deposit scan software is used. This software is free and open source by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) for the spot evaluation of spray quality. It was found that, in field condition, the developed sprayer should be operated at 1.5 km/h speed of travel and with the help of these flat fan nozzles we could get the desired image area, deposits/cm2, and deposition for the different position of plant canopy as well as sufficient to eradicate pests and diseases.
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Design and development of tractor operated onion digger with cutter bar topping unit
    (G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand), 2020-07) Naik, Mude Arjun; Pateriya, R.N.
    A tractor drawn onion digger with cutter bar topping unit which unites the benefits of topping and digging together, along with soil separation unit was designed and developed for onion crop. It comprised of a topping unit, digging unit, soil separation unit, power transmission unit, windrowing unit, main frame, and three point hitch. A standard reciprocating type cutter bar with a total cutting width of 750 mm was used as a topping unit. An inverted V- shaped blade of 650 mm was used as digging unit which was fixed to the base plate with nuts and bolts. For the conveyor a rectangular sieve with the overall dimensions of 700 × 550 mm was used for separating the onion from the soil. It was supported by two passive rollers made up of 50.8 mm diameter pipe and 550 mm length on which the canvas endless belt of 50 mm thickness was rotating over both the ends of the rollers. 20 × 55 mm MS flats are bolted perpendicular on the belt with a span of 250 mm gap between two successive flats which helps to pass the soil through the gap between the flats. A power transmission unit consisted of gear box, V- belts, shafts, and pulleys. Pulleys were used to transmit the power and maintain the speed ratio of 3:1 and 2.4:1 for conveying and topping unit respectively. The total weight of the onion digger with topper was 135 kg. The maximum stress, strain and deflection on digging unit in finite element analysis (FEA) using solid works software was found as 2.975×106 N m-2, 3.172×10-2 mm, 9.729×10-6 respectively. The physical and agronomical properties as found equatorial, polar diameter, shape index, bulk density, plant height and number of tillers per plant was measured and found to be 44.75 mm, 43.34 mm, 1.01, 561 kg m-3, 28.76 mm, 5 number respectively. Field evaluation of machine was conducted to optimize the independent parameters such as moisture content (9.5, 11.65, and 13.0%) (dry basis), rake angle (10,15, 20°) and speed of operation (2.5,3.25,4.0 km h-1) by using central composite design (CCD) in response surface methodology (RSM). The optimum conditions for maximum digging efficiency (93.76%), minimum damage percentage (6.44%) and topping efficiency (78.46%) were found at 11.39% (dry basis) moisture content, 15.12° rake angle and 3.11 km h-1 speed of operations respectively. For optimum values of independent parameters the theoretical field capacity, actual field capacity and field efficiencies were calculated 0.20 ha h-1, 0.17 ha ha-1, and 85% respectively. 4.94 hours were required to cover one hectare land using tractor operated onion digger with cutter bar topping unit that cost about rupees 2,284.88/- per ha which is 59.37 % less as compared with manual digging (Rs. 5,625/- per ha).
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Study on wear characteristics of cultivator reversible shovels and its FEM analysis
    (G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand), 2020-11) Reddy, Puchala Harsha Vardhan; Singh, R.P.
    Cultivator is one of the most used agricultural implement by Indian farmers, they faces problem of wear in its working parts. The reversible shovels are mostly used cultivator shares and they are manufactured by local manufacturers without any standard in dimensions and material as well, that affects the operational life of the shovel. To know the wear characteristics of the commercially available reversible shovels, three different make shovels were selected and a study was conducted in the fields of HRC, Pantnagar by mounting them on a nine tyne spring cultivator. The study was carried out for 100 h and the wear was analyzed both gravimetric and dimensional for each time intervals of 10, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 h of operation. The study reveals that the shovel S3 shows low gravimetric wear followed by S1 and high for S2. The dimensional wear was high for S3 followed by S1 and low for S2 because S2 was thicker than other two shovels. In India, there are only few registered cultivator manufacturers and most of the cultivators are manufactured by local artisans which encounter problems of failure under different load conditions. The stress analysis of locally manufactured cultivator tyne was analyzed by FEM (static simulation) using SolidWorks 2016 parametric design software. The analysis shows that the locally manufactured tynes had minimum factor of safety of 18. In general, machine design was carried out with minimum factor of safety as 2, so the dimensions of the tyne should be reduced in order to save the material and energy related to it that helps in cost reduction of cultivator. The maximum displacement (deflection) was observed at tip of the shovel, this indicates that the tip of shovel is subjected for wear first and same was revealed from field studies.