A new approach based on central composite design and multi-objective optimization for design of a roller-mill mechanism in a maize stubble harvester

Abstract

A maize stubble harvester is a new agriculture machinery to collect maize stubble with soil and separate soil from maize stubble such that the maize stubble can be used to produce biomass fuels. In this research, a new approach has been introduced based on central composite design (CCD) method and multi-objective optimization (MOO) method for design of the key module of a maize stubble harvester, a roller-mill mechanism, considering three design parameters and two evaluation measures. In this approach, first the central composite design method is employed for identification of proper experiment conditions considering different values of design parameters. Then experiments are conducted to collect the evaluation measures corresponding to different design parameters, and quadratic response surfaces are used to model the relations between design parameters and evaluation measures based on the collected experiment data. The different evaluation measures with different units are subsequently converted into comparable evaluation indices based on the non-linear relations between the evaluation measures and the evaluation indices. The best design parameter values are obtained through multi-objective optimization. Based on the optimal design of the roller-mill mechanism achieved using this new approach, experiment has been further conducted to demonstrate effectiveness of this approach.