<i>Design and Simulation of sweet potato mulched transplanting mechanism with “boat”-shape</i>

Abstract

Abstract. . Sweet potato is an important food and economic crop, planting on mulched soil is the main cultivation mode in spring in the northern China, which has some advantages such as improving the soil temperature and keeping the soil moisture etc. The “boat”-shape transplanting method can bring high quantity and similar size for sweet potato. But this transplanting movement on mulched soil is so complex and has certain requirements of the perpendicularity to avoid potato seedlings burnt by high temperature of plastic film mulching. So the trajectory is constrained to the agronomic requirements of sweet potato cultivation, such as plant spacing, row spacing, high ridge planting and width of membrane cavity etc. First the mathematic model of planting mechanism of sweet potato is built. Then, the virtual prototype model of transplanting mechanism is established in ADAMS software, and the static and dynamic trajectory simulation of sweet potato planting is carried out. Finally the factors of affecting planting spacing and membrane cavity width are analyzed by simulation. The results show that the planting spacing decreases and the membrane cavity width increases with the rotate speed increases; while both the planting spacing and the membrane cavity width increases with the moving velocity speed increases. This paper can provide a theoretical basis for the development of the planting mechanism of the potato seedlings.