Abstract
To solve the problem of weeding under Y-trellis pear orchards, a unilateral obstacle-avoiding mower (UOAM) was developed in this study. The mower is composed of an obstacle-avoiding disc mechanism, a hydraulic profiling mechanism, and a cutting disc mechanism. The diameter of the obstacle-avoiding disc was 0.7 m, which could swing around the trunk or ground pile actuated by the spring mechanism. The piston movement of the hydraulic cylinder controls the working position of the obstacle-avoiding disc. The maximum extension distance of the hydraulic profiling arm was 1 m. Based on the national standards and actual situation of orchards, the optimum parameters were determined with a combination of advancing speed of 0.44 m/s, rotation speed of the cutting disc at 2000 r/min, blade number of 2, and cutting edge length of 0.2 m. Finally, the design parameters were verified by the mathematical model of the blade cutting edge trajectory and multi-body dynamics simulation. Taking stubble cutting stability, leakage rate, working efficiency and costs as the test indexes, field performance comparison tests were carried out on the three operation modes of UOAM mowing, shoulder carrying mower (SCM) mowing and manual weeding. Test results showed that the coefficient variation of stubble cutting height of UOAM was the smallest, showing that the working stability of UOAM was better than the other two treatments. The leakage rate of UOAM was 2.42%, and its coefficient variation was lower than that of SCM. The working efficiency of UOAM was much higher than that of SCM and manual weeding, which was 4.44 times of SCM and 20 times of manual weeding. The profitable area of UOAM was 7.02 hm2, showing that it was suitable for large-scale mechanized Y-trellis pear orchards. Keywords: unilateral obstacle-avoiding mower, Y-trellis pear orchard, movement trajectory, working performance DOI: 10.25165/j.ijabe.20221501.7013 Citation: Lei X H, Qi Y N, Zeng J, Yuan Q C, Chang Y H, Lyu X L. Development of unilateral obstacle-avoiding mower for Y-trellis pear orchard. Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2022; 15(1): 71–78.
Highlights
The mower is composed of an obstacle-avoiding disc mechanism, a hydraulic profiling mechanism, and a cutting disc mechanism
The rotation diameter of shoulder carrying mower (SCM) was relatively small, it had the same problem of touching the soil, the stubble cutting height was set at 10 cm
The stubble cutting height of SCM was lower than the set value, with a relative error of 16.7%, which was bigger than that of unilateral obstacle-avoiding mower (UOAM), showing that the operation stability of SCM was lower than that of UOAM
Summary
Weeding is a requisite agronomic section in orchard management. Herbicide spraying destroys the ecological environment[1,2] and promotes weed resistance[3]. Zhang et al.[9,10] developed a scraper-type orchard intra-row weeding device based on computer modeling simulation and optimization. Xu et al.[11] developed an automatic intra-row obstacle-avoiding mower for trellis grape orchard, achieving a coverage rate of field weeding of 98.1%. Researchers are focused on new types of mowing robots and the performance evaluation of different mechanized weeding methods. Granatstein et al.[19] compared the effects of mechanical inter-row weeding, herbicide spraying and flame weeding in organic apple and pear orchards. China is still in the stage of developing efficient orchard mowers currently, and the performance evaluation methods of mechanized lawn mowers are the future research direction. A unilateral obstacle-avoiding mower (UOAM) for Y-trellis pear orchards was developed, which is useful for mowing intra-row weeds and saving labor force and costs
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