Computer aided design and development of a tractor operated three row rotary weeder
| dc.contributor.author | Modak Shreyas Prakash | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2017-02-21T10:02:47Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2017-02-21T10:02:47Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2011 | |
| dc.description.abstract | India is a huge and progressive economy with GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growing at a rate of more than 7 percent since last four-five years and is expected to cross two digit number in near future. Even though agriculture is the predominant occupation in India, the share of agriculture in employment has dropped from 52% in 2007-08 to 45.5% in 2009-10 (Anonymous, 2011a). The government initiatives have shifted the agricultural labour to the other sectors. This necessitates the enhancement of the level of mechanization in agriculture. The tillage, seeding/ planting and harvesting technologies available in the country are at its edge of success in case of major crops like wheat, paddy, sugarcane, and cotton etc. However, there is large gap in the available technologies world over and in the country for inter-cultural or weeding operations. The available technologies are manual weeders, self propelled rotary weeders and tractor operated weeders. Manual weeding though most effective but is very laborious, time consuming i.e. it requires on an average 300 to 1200 man-h/ha (Padole, 2007) and very costly i.e. one third of cost of cultivation is being spent for it in major row crops like sorghum (Rangasamy et al, 1993). The manual weeders developed for wheat and other row crops are pull and push type and thus weeds removed are not mixed into soil. The performance of the self propelled, walk behind type rotary power tiller developed for weeding in orchards has been found highly satisfactory in cotton, sunflower and other wide row crops. However, the capacity of the machine was low as compared to tractor operated implements (Anonymous, 2009). Hence, there was a need to adopt tractor operated rotary weeders. The available tractor operated weeders having fixed row to row spacing and the available rotary weeders having adjustable row to row spacing had many operational and design problems. Therefore, it was decided to redesign the tractor operated rotary weeder using computer aided analysing and designing (CAAD) software CATIA V5R19 for tackling the problem effectively. Initially the major components like blade, flange, shafts, bearings, chain and sprockets, chain housing, gearbox and main frame of the machine were designed theoretically. A J-shaped blade having an edge curve was selected. The static and dynamic forces acting on the blade were calculated to be 196.3 N and 55.5 N respectively. The maximum rotary power required per rotary assembly was calculated to be 11.3 hp. The duplex 19.05 mm pitch chain was selected for power transmission from main shaft to rotary assembly. The blade shaft and main shaft were having diameter of 45 mm and 40 mm respectively. A shovel of 250 mm width was selected and this was having designed power requirement of 2.43 hp. Thereafter, the solid modeling of the tractor operated three row rotary weeder was done in CATIA. The critical components like blades, blade flange, blade shaft, chain sprockets, chain housing, main shaft, shovel, bevel gear and pinion were analyzed using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tool in CATIA. The analysis results showed that the theoretically designed dimensions were appropriate for all the parts as the parts were safe in analysis under working stresses. Thereafter, the machine components were got fabricated from the local market according to the design specifications and market availability. The preliminary field trials of the machine have shown satisfactory performance. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810001996 | |
| dc.keywords | weed, rotary weeder, tractor operated rotary weeder, CAAD, solid modeling, FEA. | en_US |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana | en_US |
| dc.sub | Others | en_US |
| dc.subject | null | en_US |
| dc.theme | Farm Power and Machinery | en_US |
| dc.these.type | M.Sc | en_US |
| dc.title | Computer aided design and development of a tractor operated three row rotary weeder | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |