• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.513-520
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• 2002

A 5-row walking garlic harvester with pulling mechanism was developed in the study, based upon a kinematical analysis and related preliminary field tests on the conventional garlic harvesting method. The harvesting efficiency of the developed harvester was more than 98% in the garlic field irrigated before harvesting, 80-85% in the field without irrigation. The harvesting performance of the harvester was 660∼825㎡/hr at the forward speed of harvester of 0.3m/s in the irrigated field before garlic harvesting. For proper garlic drying and collection, the harvester discharged the harvested garlic on the ground uniformly at the angles of 135。∼150。 to its forward direction with the garlic bulb's placing toward the harvester. In the field tests, it was recommended that the forward speed of the harvester be approximately less than 0.2m/s, and that the spacing of planting garlic seeds should be standardized in the future fur increasing its harvesting efficiency.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.283-289
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• 2014

Purpose: This study was carried out to evaluate the labor requirement and the cost-reducing effects of the pick-up type pulse crop harvester compared with those of conventional harvesting for soybeans and red beans. Methods: The labor requirement and the cost to gather, thresh, and clean for conventional harvesting operations were surveyed; those for the pick-up type pulse crop harvester were estimated for soybeans and red beans. The annual capacity of the harvester and the break-even area of the two harvesting methods were also estimated. Results: For soybean harvesting, the labor requirement of 0.57 hour-persons/10 a for the pick-up type pulse crop harvester reflects a 91.9% reduction in the labor requirement of 7.00 hour-persons/10 a for conventional harvesting. Machinery costs of 51,300 won/10 a for the harvester were estimated for an annual harvesting area of 52.5 ha/year, representing a reduction of 33.3% from the 78,700 won/10 a cost of conventional harvesting. A break-even area of 28.4 ha was estimated for the two harvestings. For red bean harvesting, the labor requirement of 0.57 hour-persons/10 a for the harvester reflects a 92.6% reduction in the labor requirement of 7.66 hour-persons/10 a for conventional harvesting. For an annual harvesting area of 52.5 ha/year, annual capacity of 52.5 ha/year and machinery costs of 51,700 won/10 a were estimated for the harvester, reflecting a reduction of 44.7% in the cost of 93,500 won/10 a for conventional harvesting. A break-even area of 23.1 ha was estimated for the two harvestings. A governmental subsidy for purchasing the harvester could contribute to reducing the break-even area and harvesting costs. Conclusions: The pick-up type pulse crop harvester for soybean and red bean harvesting could reduce the labor requirement and costs of conventional harvesting, and a governmental subsidy for purchasing the harvester will improve the economics of the harvester for efficient mechanical harvesting.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 1993.10a
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• pp.744-751
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• 1993

A prototype motorised hand-held mango harvester was designed and fabricated at the faculty of Engineering , University of Agriculture Malaysia. The harvester is aimed at reducing the harvesting operation time, improving the working comfort during the operation and increasing the harvesting capacity. The mango harvester consists of gripping and detaching devices, a power transmission shaft with a 12 V battery operated motor and an aluminium pole together with a collecting chute. Preliminary observation on the harvester's performance showed significant and satisfactory results. It was found out that the magno harvester was capable of harvesting on an average six seconds for each fruit detachment. Further study is being conducted to improve the efficiency and capacity of the mango harvester.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.567-576
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• 2017

Design of piezoelectric energy harvester for a wide operating frequency range is a challenging problem and is currently being investigated by many researchers. Widening the operating frequency is required, as the energy is harvested from ambient source of vibration which consists of spectrum of frequency. This paper presents a new technique to increase the operating frequency range which is achieved by designing a harvester featured by a propped cantilever beam with variable over hang length. The proposed piezoelectric energy harvester is modeled analytically using Euler Bernoulli beam theory and the effectiveness of the harvester is demonstrated through experimentation. The results from analytical model and from experimentation reveal that the proposed energy harvester generates an open circuit output voltage ranging from 36.43 V to 11.94 V for the frequency range of 27.24 Hz to 48.47 Hz. The proposed harvester produces continuously varying output voltage and power in the broadened operating frequency range.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.290-298
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• 2014

Purpose: To ascertain the increase of the farm income that predominantly relies on human resources by mechanizing Welsh onion harvesting, a tractor-mounted Welsh onion harvester was developed in this study. Method: An experiment for evaluating harvesting performance was performed for the developed Welsh onion harvester in an actual Welsh onion farm. The harvest performance was evaluated at the tractor running speeds of 5.0 cm/s, 11.4 cm/s and 15.8 cm/s, by comparing the operating efficiency, harvest rate, and damage rate of the Welsh onion harvester. Results: The performance of the harvester was rated as very good, with a 100% harvest rate, regardless of tractor running speed. Furthermore, it is shown that work efficiency of the harvester is expected to increase as the running speed increases. Nonetheless, the damage rate of the harvested Welsh onions at running speeds 5.0 cm/s, 11.4 cm/s, and 15.8 cm/s, increased correspondingly and proportionally to speeds from 4.55% to 6.53% and to 11.29%. The residual amount of soil on the harvested Welsh onions was about 0.24% of their weight showing excellent soil-removal performance of the harvester. Conclusion: The developed Welsh onion harvester is believed to improve the labor productivity and cultivation environment of Welsh onion farmhouses by the mechanization of the harvesting process that is currently associated with the largest amount of labor hours.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.12-22
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• 2017

Purpose: This aim of this study was to develop a pick-up type pulse crop harvester for harvesting cut and dried pulse crop. Methods: The pick-up type pulse crop harvester was designed and constructed. Its specifications and operating performance were investigated. Results: Compared with conventional bean harvesters, the pick-up type pulse crop harvester adopted seven rows of chains with tines to pick-up the cut and dried pulse crop on a flat or ridged field, two transverse threshing drums with steel wire teeth to reduce the threshing speed, and a tilt plate and plastic bucket elevator for conveying clean grain to reduce damage. The threshing speed and the oscillating frequency of the separating and cleaning parts according to crop type and condition could be varied easily to efficiently use engine power and to improve harvesting performance. The harvester showed forward speed ranges of 0 ~ 1.5 m/s during harvesting operation, and 0 ~ 2.5 m/s during road travelling. The pick-up width of the harvester was about 1 m. Conclusions: The pick-up type self-propelled 51.5 kW harvester was designed and constructed to harvest cut and dried pulse crop. The effective field capacity of the harvester was predicted as above 40 a/h.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.22-35
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• 1995

Pepper is the most important horticultural plant in Korean farm. Pepper harvesting has been known to be the most difficult process in pepper cultivation so that demand for mechanization is strong. In a research to develop a pepper harvesting machine performance and capacity of the harvester should be determined based on both economical feasibility and machine design concept. In order to accomplish an economical analysis of the pepper harvester, a mathematical model for comparing manual harvesting cost to machine harvest cost was developed. Validity of the model depends on the data used in the model. Economical information for the model variables was acquired from the result of farm survey on pepper cultivation technique and economics of pepper farmer. Technical information on pepper harvester were also collected through literature review and analyzed. Based on the economical analysis and synthesis of the technical information on pepper harvesters, its performance and capacity were determined. The operating performances of the harvester such as cutting, conveying, flipping, pepper removing and post-processing (sorting) were determined. Daisy capacity of the machine was determined to be 0.41 ha. A pepper harvester with the suggested capacity was economically feasible if the price of pepper harvester, pepper recovery ratio and service life of harvester were about 6 million won, 80%, and 4 years, respectively.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.463-469
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• 2015

A vibration-based energy harvester and its equivalent circuit models have been reported. Most models predict voltage signals at harmonic excitation. However, vibrations in a natural environment are unpredictable in frequency and amplitude. In this paper, we propose a realistic equivalent circuit model of a frequency-up-converting impact-based piezoelectric energy harvester. It can describe the behavior of the harvester in a real environment where the frequency and the amplitude of the excitation vary arbitrarily. The simulation results of the model were compared with experimental data and showed good agreement. The proposed model can predict both the impact response and long term response in a non-harmonic excitation. The model is also very useful to analyze the performance of energy conversion circuitry with the harvester.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.70-76
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• 2017

The pollution problem of fossil energy sources has caused the development of green energy harvesting systems. Piezoelectric energy harvesting technology has been developed under those external environmental factors. A piezoelectric energy harvester can be defined as a device which transforms mechanical vibration or impact energy into electrical energy. Most researches have focused on bender structures. However, these have a limitation on energy efficiency because of the small effective electromechanical coupling factor, around 10%. Therefore, we should look for a new design for energy harvesting. A cymbal energy harvester can be a good candidate for the high-power energy harvester because it uses a high amplification mechanism using endcaps while keeping a higher electromechanical coupling factor. In this research, we focused on energy efficiency improvements of the cymbal energy harvester by changing the polarization direction, because the electromechanical coupling factor of the k33 mode and the k15 mode is larger than that of the k31 mode. Theoretically, we checked the cymbal harvester with radial polarization and it could obtain 6 times larger energy than that with the k31 direction polarization. Furthermore, we verified the theoretical expectation using the finite element method program. Consequently, we could expect a more efficient cymbal harvester with the radial polarization by comparing two polarization directions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.458-468
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• 2016

Electromechanical model for analyzing a multimodal piezoelectric energy harvester comprising three connected beams is presented in this paper. This system consists of three beams which are connected alternately. The piezoelectric layer is only attached to the middle beam. With this special structural configuration, the first, second, and third natural frequencies are congregated so that the energy harvester can generate meaningful amount of power consistently when the main frequency component of the excitation varies around the lowest three natural frequencies of the harvester. To investigate the dynamic and electric response of the piezoelectric energy harvester, an electromechanical model is developed using the Kane's method and the accuracy of the model is validated by comparing the results obtained with the model with those obtained with the commercial software ANSYS. The results show that the piezoelectric energy harvester comprising three connected beams has much broader power generating frequency range than that of the conventional piezoelectric energy harvester.