The Mechanism Design Of Cow Gait Simulator

Dairy cow lameness is widespread in farms.It could reduce the milk production of dairy cows,cause the cow to decline in physical condition,seriously affect the reproductive performance of dairy cows,and may even lead to premature elimination of dairy cows.The general method can not easily identify the dairy cow with early lameness,and the best treatment time will be missed.Now,we have a pressure measurement trail(Walkway),which can capture the gait parameters.We could write a post-processing software,and use Walkway to detect dairy cows.By extracting and analyzing the data,we could detect the slight limp cows in time,and as soon as possible to treat dairy cows to improve the cure rate of lameness.At the early stage of experiment,in the development of the post-processing software,due to the environmental constraints and other factors,it is not convenient to introduce the cow into the laboratory for testing.In order to facilitate the test,we designed a cow gait simulator.It could simulate the different walking gait of the cow,and could be used to provide the basis for the debugging of the post-processing software.Meantime,it is convenient to classify the lameness of cows,that we could use the device to build the initial model database of the digital identification of dairy cow early lameness.By combining the previous scholar research results,according to the main gait parameters that could be used to identify dairy cow early lameness,this paper proposed a motion mechanism,which could simulated the walking speed,walking step,peak pressure,support time and contact angle.In this paper,the virtual prototype of the device was established by Solidworks,the relevant equipments was selected and the key components was checked by Solidworks Simulation and Solidworks Motion,then Part drawings and assembly drawings were draw by Solidworks for production.Finally,testing the device on Walkway,the walking speed could be 1.753m/s,the walking step could be 1635mm,the peak pressure could be 2101.12N,the left to right deflection angle could be-17.24°～17,29°,the back to front deflection angle could be-42.93°～45.96°,and the support time could be 5.38s.The results show that the device performance is well,and meets the requirement of the cow gait simulation.