• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제41권1호
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• pp.21-33
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• 2016

Purpose: In order to ensure that vegetable seedlings (with a soil block around their roots) are planted in an upright orientation after metering in a vegetable transplanter, they need to be dropped freely from a certain height. The walk-behind hand-tractor-powered machines do not have sufficient space to drop the seedlings from that height. In the present work, a hopper-type planting device was developed for the walk-behind hand-tractor-powered vegetable transplanter to ensure that the soil block seedlings are planted in an upright orientation. Methods: Various dimensionless terms were developed based on the dimensional analysis approach, and their effect on the planting of soil block seedlings in an upright orientation (planting efficiency) was studied. The optimum design dimensions of the hopper-type planting device were identified by the Taguchi method of optimization. Results: The ratio of the height of free fall to the sliding distance of the seedling on the surface of the hopper had the highest influence on planting efficiency. The planting efficiency was highest for plants with a height $15{\pm}2cm$. The plant handling Froude number, in interaction with the design of the hopper-type planting device, also significantly affected the planting efficiency. Of the hopper design factors, the length of the slide of the seedlings on the surface of the hopper was most important, and induced sufficient velocity and rotation to cause the seedling to fall in an upright orientation. An evaluation of the performance of the planting device under actual field conditions revealed that the planting efficiency of the developed planting device was more than 97.5%. Conclusions: As the seedlings were fed to the metering device manually, an increase in planting rate increased missed plantings. The planting device can be adopted for any vegetable transplanter in which the seedlings are allowed to drop freely from the metering device.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제26권2호
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• pp.115-122
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• 2001

An impact-type seed-metering device was developed for the planting of rice-pellets. In this study, new design of pellet-metering device focused on simplicity and precision seeding for the planting of rice-seed pellets. In addition of seed-metering device, several devices were also developed such as seed-guiding device, seed-supplying tube and furrow opener for precision pellet planting. Field test was conducted to estimate the planting performance of the developed metering device. As a cam rotates, the impact bar of the metering device pushes a rice-seed pellet so that the seed can be discharged from the seed-supplying tube in the impact-type seed-metering device. Results of the tests showed that mean seeding spacing was 12cm at the traveling speed of 1.0m/s, corresponding to a target spacing for planting of rice-seed pellets. Also, both miss-seeded rate and damaged-seed rate were less than 2.0%, indicating acceptable levels for the precision planting. The developed mechanism of the impact-type metering device can be directly applied to the design of metering devices for the precision pellet planting of other crops.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제43권3호
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• pp.202-210
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• 2018

Purpose: Due to the growing demand for vegetables all year round, the use of vegetable transplanters has become widespread in agricultural production. However, the type of planting device used for the transplanter affects its overall efficiency. Problems such as inaccurate planting angles and inefficiently wide transplanting hole diameters of the planting device has limited the efficient use of some vegetable transplanters. Our goal in this study was to improve the efficiency of the transplanter by analyzing and modifying the linkages of the planting device of a vegetable transplanter. Methods: Because of its widespread usage in Korea, a linkage-type planting device was used for the experiment, which was divided into three parts. In the first part, the physical trajectory of the tranplanter was extracted using a CCD (charge-coupled device) camera and analyzed. In the second part, a simulated trajectory was developed using Recurdyn 3D software. The simulated and actual trajectories were then compared and analyzed. In the third part, based on the results of the comparison, improvements were made on the linkages of the transplanter and a demonstrative exercise was conducted. Finally, in experiment B, the performance was evaluated through an exercise using both the existing and improved planting devices. Results: The results demonstrated that the average planting angle was improved by 4.96 mm, the soil intrusion diameter was improved by 11.30 mm, and the planting depth was improved by 0.68 mm. Conclusion: It was concluded that the efficiency of a vegetable transplanter can be improved by modifying the linkages through simulations and field demonstrations.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제30권5호
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• pp.261-267
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• 2005

In order to save labor and cost, direct seeding has been considered as an important alternative to the machine transplanting in rice cultivation. As current seeders for direct seeding of rice seeds drill irregular amount of seeds under various operating conditions, conventional drilling should be turned to precision planting which enables accurate placement of proper amount of rice seeds at equal intervals within rows. In this study, design, construction and performance evaluation of a precision seed metering device for planting of rice seeds were carried out. As prototype, the conventional roller type seed metering device was modified for planting: increasing diameter of metering roller, setting 2 or 4 seed cells on metering roller, adding seed discharging lid and its driving cam mechanism. Through performance tests for prototype and the current seed metering device, number of seeds in a hill, planting space and its error ratio, coefficient of variation of planting space (planting accuracy), and seeding length of $90\%$ of seeds in a hill divided by planting space (planting precision) at setting planting spaces of 15, and 20cm, seeding heights of 10, and 20cm, and seeding speeds of 0.1, 0.2, and 0.5m/s were investigated. Prototype showed better seed planting performance than the current seed metering devices. When setting planting space of 15 cm and seeding height of 10cm, prototype with 2 seed cells showed that variations of planting space and seeding lengths of $90\%$ of seeds in a hill at up to seeding speed of 0.5m/s were within 0.9cm, and 3.6cm, respectively.

• 한국농업기계학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국농업기계학회 2000년도 THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY ENGINEERING. V.II
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• pp.438-445
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• 2000

Positioning garlic cloves in upright standing in garlic field has been regarded as a very important job because it affects clove rooting, growing and, eventually, quality and yield in garlic production, Because of the geometrical uniqueness and irregularity of garlic cloves in shape, the planting operation has been conducted by manual work that needs a tremendous human labors and increases garlic production cost. The overall objective of this research was to develop garlic planting machine through investigating physical properties of garlic and designing clove upright positioning device after figuring out the factors affecting metering device and upright clove positioning mechanism. With the outcomes of the metering and posture positioning experiment, a garlic clove planter having twelve planting rows was developed for 37kW type tractor and feasibility test was carried out in the field. And, According to the performance test and cost analysis, the planter could accomplish planting operation of one hectare plot in 6.3 hours giving 48 times better efficiency, 6.3hrs/ha, and 74.2% of production cost reduction effect, 1,092,546won/ha, than the manual works of 299hrs/ha and 282,258won/ha. And, break-even point ofthe planter was calculated as of 2.71 hectares.

• Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
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• 제5권2호
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• pp.45-49
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• 2004

Objective of the study was to develop a garlic clove metering device. The metering device consisted of a drum, a bucket and a bucket cover. A garlic clove simulator was designed to simulate motions of garlic cloves in the metering device. Simulation was performed using a multibody dynamic analysis program, RecurDyn version 5.1. Physical properties of garlic cloves such as mass and center of gravity were determined using 3D CAD modeler, IDEAS version 10.0. In order to compare the results of the simulation with actual movement of a garlic, movement of garlic clove was photographed by a high speed camera. A prototype metering device was built and tested under various metering speeds and metering guide angles. At the 12 rpm metering speed, rate of single-clove-discharge was $90.0\%$ and missing rate $1.3\%$ at $5^{\circ}$.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제22권4호
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• pp.401-410
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• 1997

Scattering of seeds is one of the problems in the hill- dropping planters with a roller-type metering device. For crops like rice, corns and beans, the hill-dropping is own better for a high yield than the drill planting. The roller type metering device has been used for the drill planters and has many advantages. However, it has a problem of scattering of seeds when they are placed on rows. In this study a method was developed to design the roller type metering device fir the precision hill-droppings. Design parameters were derived to configure completely the geometries of the roller and brush. The method was applied to the design of the metering device of the rice seeding machines. The field test showed that the metering device designed by the method made a better performance of seed placement than that made by the precvious one. The method also can be applied to the design of metering devices for the precise hill-droppings of other crops.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제34권3호
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• pp.140-146
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• 2009

The garlic, along with the red pepper, is one of the major seasoning vegetables in Korea. Garlic clove planting is one of the most laborious operations. Labor cost is the main source of high production cost of the garlic. Because of the geometrical uniqueness and irregularity of garlic cloves, mechanization of garlic clove planting is very difficult. To overcome price competition against the imported garlic, however, there has been a need of development of a clove metering device and a planting device for the garlic clove planter. Computer simulation, laboratory tests and field tests were conducted to develop a garlic clove planter. This research was conducted to drop garlic cloves into a soil holes through a drum bucket metering system and a rotary type planting system. Followings are the major achievements from this study. 1. The metering device consisted of a drum, a guide, a bucket and a bucket cover. Opening positions of the metering hopper were evaluated at different positions and trajectories of planting hoppers. The simulation showed that the optimum positions of hopper was -15${\sim}$0 mm in the x direction. 2. When the planter was tested under different soil textures and water contents, the best performances were obtained in a upland field with 29.1% water content and a paddy field with 18.3% water content where single clove metering and missing rate were 88.4% and 1.3%, and 90.7% and 2.0%, respectively.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제27권6호
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• pp.547-556
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• 2002

Upright positioning of garlic cloves in mechanical planting has been considered as an essential process because pose of garlic affects not only initial budding and rooting of garlics but quality and yield. Due to the geometrical uniqueness and irregularity of garlic cloves in shape, manual planting operation has been conducted. The overall objective of this research was to determine design factors for designing a garlic clove planter The results are summarized as follows : 1. A vibrating-type clove-metering device was designed and tested. Effects of tilted angle of metering plate and magnitude of vibration on metering performance were investigated. The successful planting rates of the metering device were 96.7% for Hanji varieties. 2. Clove upright-positioning device, posture inducer was designed and tested. When the clearance between the hoppers was set at 4mm, the rates of upright positioning of the device were 92.2% for with Hanji varieties. 3. Optimum metering performance was observed at the plate tilted angle of 80。 with the posture type positioning device.

• 한국농업기계학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국농업기계학회 1996년도 International Conference on Agricultural Machinery Engineering Proceedings
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• pp.1021-1030
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• 1996

The mechanism of the mulch film cutter assembly designed as an integral part of a rice transplanting device was developed for mulching cultivation of early season culture rice. This mulch film cutter assembly was directly attached to the transplanting device of the rotary type Japanese transplanter. The principle is that the knife cut a planting slit on the polyethylene film while the planting finger immediately plants seedling into the soil through the planting slit. Computer results implied that the knife of the mulch film cutter assembly can make appropriate planting slit on the polyethylene film as the planting finger effectively plants the seedlings into the paddy soil through the same planting slits.