Studies on Controlling Variables of the Conveying Unit of a Power Tiller Operated Groundnut Digger

Abstract

A power tiller operated groundnut digger was designed and developed in the Dept. of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, CAET, OUAT, Bhubaneswar during 2021–22. The objective of this project was to optimize the operational parameters of the digger's conveying unit using the RSM technique. The study analysed the effects of soil moisture content and conveyor speed, on the conveying efficiency and soil separation efficiency with two different types of peg geometries. The central composite rotatable design (CCRD) method with a quadratic model was utilized to correlate the independent parameters with the conveying and soil separation efficiencies. The results indicated that variations in soil moisture content and conveyor speed had a significant impact on the conveying and soil separation efficiencies. The optimum parameters for the conveying unit of a power tiller operated groundnut digger were found to be a soil moisture range of 9.0-12.0%, a conveyor speed of 1.0 m/s and straight shank with bending tip pegs, resulting in a conveying efficiency and soil separation efficiency of 89.45% and 71.45%, respectively.