Abstract
In rice–wheat rotation areas of China, traditional wheat seeders have severe blockage, low working efficiency and poor seeding quality. In this study, a pneumatic shooting technology was designed, consisting mainly of a nozzle, shell and acceleration tube. To improve the sowing depth of the pneumatic shooting device, the response-surface methodology of structure parameters and CFD simulation technology was adopted in this work. The effects of working pressure, acceleration-tube diameter and throat distance on the steady airflow length (SAL) and steady airflow velocity (SAV) were studied by airflow field analysis, and the response-surface method was introduced to obtain the optimal parameter combination of the pneumatic shooting device for wheat. The optimal parameter combination was working pressure 686 kPa, acceleration tube diameter 8 mm and throat distance 20 mm. The simulation result showed that the optimized device of pneumatic shooting performs faster and has more stable airflow field characteristics in comparison to the initial device. The field test demonstrated that the optimized device has about 68% higher seeding depth than the initial device. The average field-seeding depth of the optimized device was 19.95 mm, which is about 68% higher than the initial device. The emergence rate for the optimized device was about 88.7% without obvious reduction. CFD and response-surface methods positively affect the optimization of pneumatic wheat-shooting devices, and the significance was also confirmed.
Highlights
As one of the three major grain crops in China, wheat plays a vital role in ensuring national food security
Current research mainly focuses on the wheat soil-ripping parameters of pneumatic wheat shooting under different conditions [10], but there is little study on the internal airflow field analysis and performance improvement of it
After the high-pressure airflow enters the pneumatic wheat-shooting device, a supersonic jet-flow field is formed in its internal cavity
Summary
As one of the three major grain crops in China, wheat plays a vital role in ensuring national food security. Different from traditional seeding equipment, wheat-shooting technology is not in direct contact with the soil [7]. It has the advantages of no adhesion and blockage, minor soil disturbance and high operation efficiency [8,9]. Current research mainly focuses on the wheat soil-ripping parameters of pneumatic wheat shooting under different conditions [10], but there is little study on the internal airflow field analysis and performance improvement of it. With the assistance of the fluid-dynamics software, Cheng Xiupei et al simulated the impacts of different diameters of suction holes on the airflow field of the precision seed-metering device for wheat and thereby produced the optimal diameter parameters of suction holes ranging from 1.4 mm to 1.8 mm [16]
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