Recent progress and future prospects for mechanized harvesting of fruit crops with shaking systems

Plow pan is one of the main obstacles to high production of agricultural plants in Chongqing, China. As a minimal tilling method, subsoiling can break the plow pan and help the growth of agricultural plants. There are two subsoiling methods: vibrating subsoiling (VS) and traditional subsoiling (TS). A soil model with upland field features in Chongqing was established for DEM-based simulation. The simulation was validated by field experiments, in items of soil looseness, coefficient of soil disturbance, and cross-section of tillage, the errors of the simulated and experimental values of the soil looseness and soil disturbance coefficient of TS and VS were 12.9% and 14.7%, respectively. Compared with TS, VS resulted in lower soil looseness, higher coefficient of soil disturbance, smaller width of upper furrow, and lighter damage of tillage layer, and no obvious overturn of soil blocks was observed for the VS. Compared with TS, vibration helps improve the tillage performance of subsoilers.

This study is based on the discrete element method to design a tracked precision solid particle pesticide applicator and establish a coupling model between the pesticide application device and particle swarm EDEM. Simulation shows that particle characteristics significantly affect the uniformity of pesticide application. The coefficients of variation for particles 1, 2, and 3 are 4.25%, 4.63%, and 5.57%, respectively, with relative deviations of 8.51%, 9.28%, and 11.33%. After response surface testing optimization, the measured coefficient of variation of the prototype was 8.25% and the relative deviation was 18.07%, both of which met industry standards.