Biological Systems Engineering, Department of
First Advisor
Md Monjurul Alam
Second Advisor
Md Mosharraf Hossain
Committee Members
Muhammad Ashik-E-Rabbani
Date of this Version
12-2017
Document Type
Thesis
Citation
A thesis submitted to Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Farm Power and Machinery, December 2017
Abstract
In rice production system, transplanting and fertilizer application are tedious, time consuming and laborious task, and mostly done manually in Bangladesh. Mechanical planting of rice and granular urea placement have distinctive advantages over manual operation. Mechanical planting of rice becoming popular in the country in recent years and few machines have been developed for guti-urea deep placement, however having some limitations. Considering precise guti-urea placement along with rice transplanting, an attempt was under taken to design and fabricate an electronic control guti-urea applicator to be attach with a 4-row walk behind type rice transplanter. Fabrication of the electronic guti-urea applicator was done in the workshop of Department of Farm Power and Machinery, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh. Metering disks, hopper with discharge tubes of BARI guti-urea applicator was redesigned with a steel frame structure to be attach behind the rice transplanter. Electronic circuit-controlled DC geared motor was selected and coupled with metering disk shaft to rotate and pick guti-urea from hopper. DC motor rpm was synchronized with the picker speed of rice transplanter which is facilated with a microcontroller Arduino Mega 2560. A computer program was developed and compiled successfully into Arduino IDE where an equation having constant values were calculated and incorporated into loop control structure. Designed electronic circuit was simulated and verified in Proteus 8.0 simulator before constructing real electronic system. Laboratory based experiments were conducted where the average spacing of guti-urea placement was found 34.71 cm, however theoretical spacing is 30 cm. Missing percentage of guti-urea of the designed applicator was found 0.90 which is quite satisfactory. The power requirement of the developed applicator was found 20 Watts. This research provided an option for performing guti-urea application and rice transplanting tasks simultaneously. Electronic control of agro-machinery is at the preliminary stage of development in Bangladesh. Further study is needed in this area.
Comments
Copyright 2017, Md Towfiqur Rahman. Used by permission