Virtual Simulation of Sprayer Composite Boom Using 1D Approach

Harnessing the benefits of light weight composite materials is increasing in Agriculture industry too. Sprayers are machines that are used to spray fertilizers/chemicals in fields over the crop, through nozzles that get attached to long slender truss like structures called ‘Booms’. These booms are traditionally made of metals and could vary from 60ft to 120ft in length from one end to another end. In order to spray on more acreage in same time, customers demand for increased lengths of booms and the metal booms add lot of weight into the structures which in turn will affect the fuel consumption, soil compaction, power/weight ratio, etc. Hence, several boom manufacturers are looking into light weight composite materials as an alternative to metal booms, to make the booms longer. Majority of the futuristic Sprayer machines are getting equipped with Composite material Booms for more productivity and for other benefits. Virtual Simulation of Composite Booms is very challenging in terms of material modeling and properties, capturing dynamic behavior, failure modes etc., when compared to simulation of metallic isotropic Sprayer booms. This paper talks about low fidelity 1-Dimensional methodology to simulate the Boom dynamic behavior that can yield faster results like accelerations, joint loads and section forces. This paper explains dynamic analysis procedure of 1D Composite Boom structure, equivalent material properties calculation for laminates, representation of various Boom entities, etc. It also talks about the correlation between the simulation and boom physical lab testing.