Abstract
Due to the cold and dry climate during the winter season of Central Asia, in order to prevent frostbite and vines drying out for wine grapes, the common methods are burying the vines in winter under a thick layer of soil and then cleaning them out in the next spring. The design of existing vine digging machinery is not precise enough and can only remove the outer layer of the soil on both sides and the top. It cannot clean the soil from the central area of the buried vine. Sometimes, the branches and buds get damaged due to uneven driving condition. To solve the problem, an innovative non-contact blower was designed and tested to clean the vine. In this paper, the design specifications and operation parameters of the blower were determined according to the agronomic properties of the grapevines. Fluent-EDEM coupling, that is, with the help of Engineering discrete element method (EDEM) and CFD fluid simulation software Fluent, was the most common method for dynamic simulation of gas-solid two-phase flow. The Fluent-EDEM coupling simulation was used to simulate the dynamics of soil particles under the action of different wind speeds and blowing patterns, with the goal of a high soil cleaning rate. A prototype of the soil cleaning blower was manufactured and tested at the vineyards of Ningxia Yuquanying Farm in China. The results showed that the blower had an operation efficiency of 4669 m2·h−1, with an average soil removal rate of 80%. The efficiency of covering soil cleaning and rattan raising was greatly improved, and the damage rate of the vines, branches and the buds was greatly reduced.
Highlights
The grape industry is one of the most important industries in the world, and the grape producing areas are mainly concentrated at latitude of 30 degrees north
In the optional range of this scheme, when the air inlet and outlet were both 215 × 180 rectangular tubes, the wind speed of the air outlet only slightly increased to 68.9 m·s−1 in the middle area, and the wind speed decreased in most areas around
The simulation results showed that the smaller the size of the outlet pipe, the greater the wind speed of the outlet pipe and the greater the dynamic pressure obtained on the target external surface
Summary
The grape industry is one of the most important industries in the world, and the grape producing areas are mainly concentrated at latitude of 30 degrees north. Due to the cold and dry winter climate in these regions, vine burying in winter and vine lifting in spring must be carried out to prevent vine damage. The vines germinate in the soil at a certain temperature and humidity, which results in the branches and buds becoming damaged, and yield decreases. This operation is highly labor-intensive and has low efficiency, which hinders the large-scale development of the grape industry and limits the grape growers’ income. It is very important to mechanize the soil-cleaning and vine-lifting process for the wine grapes industry to enhance the wine
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
