PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF AN INSTRUMENTATION SYSTEM FOR SOIL TILLAGE MEASUREMENT

Abstract

An instrumentation system was assembled to measure and record draught in soil-tool interaction in tillage study. The instrumentation system consists of a load cell, strain gauge amplifier, data logger and a computer system. The soil bin facility consists of the soil bin, soil leveling blade, smooth compaction roller, spiked roller, implement carriage system, sub implement carriage system, tool bar and fixing device, drive system(45 kW-4 wheel drive tractor) and the instrumentation system. Two experiments were conducted on the outdoor soil bin to determine the effects of speed and compaction (cone index) on draught and soil disturbance parameters. The soil in the bin was sandy clay loam. In the first experiment, speeds of tillage were 5, 10, 15, and 20km/h at constant degree of compaction of 3 passes of compaction roller. In the second experiment, 5, 10, 15 and 20 passes of compaction roller of respective mean values of cone index (compaction) of 1550, 2829, 3126 and 3775kN/m² at 8km/h constant tillage speed. The tillage depth was 120mm and the tool was a mouldboard plough for both experiments. The result of the soil bin experiments showed that the value of draught increased with increase in speed and later decreased with further increase in speed. A polynomial relationship was observed between the speed and the soil disturbance parameters except with the height of ridge and left soil throw in which inverse relationship was observed. It was also found that the value of draught increased with increase in the values of cone index and bulk density, whereas the values of the soil disturbance parameters decreased with increase in compaction.