Design And Optimization Of Garlic Conveyor And Transplanting Mechanism For Seed Tray Type Garlic Planting Machinery

China is one of the primary countries in garlic production in terms of planting area and export amount. However, Mechanization and automation of garlic planting is still a problem in China. At present, manual planting mode is widely used for domestic garlic production, which reveals disadvantages such as hard work, low efficiency, poor planting quality and high cost, etc., limiting the development of garlic production. While garlic planting mechanization has been under research for many years in China, there is no important progress made. Although there are very few models of domestically made garlic planting machines which are able to achieve automatic garlic planting, requirements such as keeping garlic clove upright with its root downward and avoiding damage of garlic seed can not be met, leading to lower budding percentage and poor quality of the products, which leads to no garlic planting machine in practical application. It is of importance to develop high quality garlic planting machinery.The main contents of this research include:(1) To determine the major specifications of self propelled garlic planting machinery based on the analysis of recent related publications, patents, garlic planting requirements, and measurements and statistics of garlic seeds dimensions (cultivar:Er Shui Zao, a major cultivar in Jiangsu Province, China);(2) To propose a new type of garlic planting mode-seed tray type garlic planting mode based on existed researches and directed on resolving problems in keeping garlic clove upright with its root downward;(3) To design garlic seed box and seed tray based on statistical analysis of garlic seed geometrical dimensions, choose garlic seed box material, make experiments on mechanical and degradation properties of seed box material, and test on the influence of seed box on garlic growth process;(4) To determine the type of garlic seed delivery mechanism and its parameters based on the garlic planting requirements;(5) To design the garlic planting machanism, and determine its optimal parameters;(6) To optimize the major parts of the garlic planting mechanism, and inertial forces.The major results are summarized as follows:(1) A new type of garlic planting mode--seed tray type garlic planting mode--were proposed based on the analysis of related researches and garlic planting requirements. The advantages of the mode include pre-arrangement of garlic seed in batch mode, upright state of garlic seed being kept during delivering process and after being planted, and simple mechanical structures;(2) Results of experiments on mechanical and degradation properties showed that molded pulp material is suitable for garlic seed box fabrication;(3) Results of experiments on effects of two planting modes, seed with and without seed box on garlic growth showed that seed-with-box mode had slight negative impact in early growing period, but no such impact in the following process. There was no significant difference for the two planting modes on garlic growth in the most of the growing process;(4) Confidence interval of garlic dimensions can be used to determine the seed box dimensions. Shape of pyramid for lower part of seed box is helpful for garlic seed to keep upright state. Perforation connections among adjacent seed boxes on seed tray are advantageous for seed box to be removed from the seed tray;(5) Requirements of seed tray type garlic planting mode can be met by turnable rack and rachet pawl mechanisms as the transverse and longitudinal feeding mechanisms of the garlic planting machinery respectively;(6) Solution to the mathematical model of slider crank device taken as the basis the planting mechanism gave the optimum length ratio of crank to connecting rod, λ=0.17, corresponding to the rod length of58.8cm, making the garlic claw reach to its maximum velocity at seed taking position, which is helpful for the seed box to be removed from the seed tray;(7) Planting mechanism modeling and its simulation analysis gave the same results as the solution to its mathematical model showed. Composite motion analysis of garlic claw showed that seed tray platform must be inclined to a certain angle in order to keep the planted garlic seed in upright state,And deduced the relationship of dip Angle and the unit speed and load bearing platform height;(8) Concept of equilibrium coefficient (k) was proposed for partial inertial force balance calculations for planting mechanism. Taking the minimization of maximum residual inertial force as optimization object, the optimal equilibrium coefficient k=0.57was obtained, providing a basis to determining the mass of balance blocks.