A NUMERICAL APPROACH FOR MECHANICS OF SOIL-TOOL INTERACTION FOR A ROBOTIC ASSISTANT FARMER

摘要

Use of mobile robots in farm setting may result in lowering production costs, reducing the manual labors, and may be essential in the future due to a potential shortage of farmers. The conditions, such as blade geometry, soil conditions, and cutting depth, have been shown to have great effects on power consumption and on efficiency of particular farm machineries. In this paper, a 3-dimensional nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) is developed to analyze behavior of a blade moving in a block of soil, and to find force reactions on the blade. This FEA model resulted in accurately predicting draft forces developed on the blade when it moves through the soil. The deformation of soil in front of the blade during soil-blade interaction is also studied. The FEA results are compared with analytical soil mechanics results which show good agreement.