Abstract
Garlic planting requires a single seed with a scaly bud upward and vertically. In this study, an automatic garlic seed directing device was designed for auxiliary garlic seeding by utilizing a seed placed funnel, a correcting mechanism, and an automatic control system. Three factors influenced device performance: characteristics of garlic seeds, limited notch diameter of the seed placed funnel, and funnel taper of the seed placed funnel. The most optimal structural parameters of the seed placed funnel were determined via theoretical analysis. The research samples of Lanling and Jinxiang garlic were divided into three groups according to their respective sizes. 3D design software (Solidworks) was used to simulate the above three factors and analyze their rules of action. The obtained simulation results demonstrated that the suitable range of funnel taper and limited notch diameter of seed placed funnel for the three groups of seed were from 40° to 60° and 6-8 mm, respectively. The bench test showed that when the funnel taper was 60° and the limited notch diameter was 10 mm, the success rates of the three groups’ seeds in terms of scaly bud directing were 89.8%, 91.6% and 96.6% respectively, which satisfied the agricultural requirements of garlic planting. Accordingly, the corresponding results may promote the study and improvement of garlic intelligent planting equipment. Keywords: garlic, garlic seed directing, simulation and analysis, automatic control DOI: 10.25165/j.ijabe.20201306.5142 Citation: Geng A J, Li X Y, Hou J L, Zhang J, Zhang Z L, Chong J. Design and experiment of automatic garlic seed directing device. Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2020; 13(6): 85–93.
Highlights
As one of the most important crops, garlic is widely cultivated in China[1]
Such planters include a garlic seeder with 3 to 12 rows from the United States[4,5], hanging garlic planter produced by Bauchi, Spain, 3-row hanging garlic planter produced by ERME, France, 10-row garlic planter designed by Jiraporn et al.[6,7] and 3-row garlic seeder
Considering the influence of the funnel taper as well as the limited notch diameter on the limit position of the garlic seed, seed placed funnels comprised of different parameters of combination were established using Solidworks, where the range of the limited notch was 5-15 mm with the step as 1 mm, and the funnel taper was from 30°-60°with the step as 2°
Summary
As one of the most important crops, garlic is widely cultivated in China[1]. In recent years, due to increasingly fierce international market competition, the garlic industry has made considerable strides and earned various victories. Certain planters have adopted mechanical seeding technology, where garlic seeds are directly transferred to an opened seed groove after taking the seeds[3] Such planters include a garlic seeder with 3 to 12 rows from the United States[4,5], hanging garlic planter produced by Bauchi, Spain, 3-row hanging garlic planter produced by ERME, France, 10-row garlic planter designed by Jiraporn et al.[6,7] and 3-row garlic seeder designed by Bakhtiari et al.[8] this method cannot guarantee the orientation of the garlic seed scaly bud as its missed and replayed rate are greater than 5%, inconsistent with the garlic sowing agronomy in China. A plug-type garlic planting machine developed by Japan's Yanmar Company first manually placed seeds into seed trays, after which the seed trays were transported to the plot. This method still requires manual assistance and has high labor intensity. This system, has not been applied in actual production
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