A bionic profiling-energy storage device based on MBD-DEM coupled simulation optimization reducing the energy consumption of deep loosening

Abstract

A novel bionic profiling energy storage device was designed in this research to reduce the energy consumption of deep loosening operations. As the core technology of conservation tillage, deep loosening has always been difficult to promote on a large scale in the Phaeozem region of Northeast China due to its high energy consumption. The deep loosening mechanism is mainly composed of deep loosening shovel and energy-storage profiling device. At present, optimizing the structure of deep loosening shovel to reduce consumption was the main research method in this field, but it is still difficult to meet the production demand. At the same time, energy storage-profiling device has been neglected by researchers for a long time because of the lack of suitable mechanism innovation ideas and efficient experiment optimization methods. Based on the excellent soil excavation capability of the hare, the bionic energy storage-profiling device (BSPD) was innovatively designed by drawing the unique mechanism of its fore-upper limb, and the MBD-DEM coupled simulation technology was proposed as the experimental optimization method. It was found that BSPD has significant advantages in flexible profiling, tillage depth control, elastic energy storage and deep loosening resistance reduction capabilities compared with traditional self-excited energy storage-profiling devices (SSPD) by the analysis methods of least significant difference (LSD), Regression Analysis and Redundancy analysis (RDA), based on the results of MBD-DEM coupled simulation experiments. In addition, it was found that the torsional elastic coefficient, as the core design parameter of BSPD, also had a significant impact on the above four capabilities, and its optimal value was obtained by the established torsional elastic coefficient-deep loosening energy consumption regression model. The field experiment results showed that the deep loosening energy consumption of BSPD was 16.2% lower than that of SSPD and filed experiment results also verified the accuracy of MBD-DEM coupled simulation results. In summary, this study found a more effective new research path in addition to the traditional deep loosening consumption reduction research methods, and provided mechanism innovation design ideas and experimental optimization methods for the research and development of agricultural soil-engaging components.