A Study on Significance of Forward Speed of Tractor and Peripheral Speed of Rotavator for Optimal Field Performance

The trace of rotavator blade is trochoidal path which depends both on tractor forward speed and rotational speed of rotavator. Since this path plays an important role in pulverization, hence pulverization also depends on both factors. In present days system, Rotavator an active tillage implements drawn by tractor is operated by drivers experience and driver set up the speed by throttling the tractor to reach the rated 540 PTO rpm mark in instrumentation cluster. Thus, there is no indication system available to farmer/ Tractor driver to operate the tractor connected rotavator at optimal forward tractor speed and rotational speed of rotavator. Thus, leading to decrease in field quality and performance. This problem statement was taken up in this research and an indicative system was developed to indicate the optimal region of rotavator operation which depends on forward speed of tractor and rotational speed of rotavator for different soil conditions namely soft, medium and hard to be selected by farmer based on a kinematic parameter(Ratio of both speeds) range which was displayed Mobile App. Hall effect speed sensors were used to calculate the speed and controller processes both the speeds to define the kinematic parameter. The developed system was tested and there was an improvement of 2.75 to 1.2% for all soil conditions in actual field capacity of the developed system over the current system. Similarly, there was reduction of 6.66% to 5% in fuel consumption and 13.9 to 15.44% improvement of mean clod diameter concluding the significance of forward speed of tractor and peripheral speed of rotavator for better field performance of the developed system.