Abstract
In recent years, small drones have been used in agriculture, for spraying water and pesticides. Although spraying systems affect the efficiency of agricultural drones considerably, research on the spraying system of drones is insufficient. In this paper, a new nozzle with a feedback channel is proposed for agricultural drones. The proposed nozzle was manufactured through 3D printing, and its performance was compared with that of the nozzle used in commercial agricultural drones. Images taken with a high-speed camera were digitally processed, to track the area and location of spray particles, and the spraying characteristics were evaluated based on the size and uniformity of the droplets obtained from the images. The proposed nozzle provided a better performance, as it could spray smaller droplets more uniformly. Commercial nozzle droplets have an average diameter of 1.76 mm, and the proposed nozzle has been reduced to a maximum of 215 μm. In addition, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the commercial nozzle is 0.233, but the proposed nozzle is up to 1.519; the proposed nozzle provided better performance, as it could spray smaller droplets more uniformly. Under the condition of 30 kg, the best performance in the proposed nozzle, the minimum value of the average droplet diameter of the nozzle without feedback channel is 595 μm and the maximum value of FWHM is 1.329. Therefore, a comparison of the performance of the proposed nozzle with that of a nozzle with no feedback channel indicates that the feedback channel effectively reduces the droplet diameter and improves the spraying uniformity. It is expected that the proposed nozzle can be useful for designing the spraying systems of agricultural drones.
Highlights
Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles, ranging from large ones that can fly thousands of kilometers to small ones that can fly in limited spaces [1]
full width at half maximum (FWHM) was used to calculate the spraying width, and the spraying uniformity was compared in terms of the spraying amount and droplet size according to the radial position
The spraying performance was evaluated in terms of the droplet size and uniformity and compared with that of a fan-shaped commercial nozzle
Summary
Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles, ranging from large ones that can fly thousands of kilometers to small ones that can fly in limited spaces [1]. Chen et al [19] compared the performance by selecting three nozzles, to extend the flight time of agricultural drones by reducing the amount of pesticide spraying per unit area. These studies have been limited to evaluating the nozzle performance, and research on the spray system is insufficient. In this study, we developed a nozzle with a feedback channel for the spraying system of agricultural drones that can improve the effective spray width, droplet size, and spray uniformity
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