Theses and Dissertations Collection

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Browsing Theses and Dissertations Collection by Author "Richard, Nelson"

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    Performance evaluation of horizontal and vertical rotavators
    (Junagadh Agricultural University, 2015) Richard, Nelson
    In tillage, rotavator blades may be rotated on vertical-axis or horizontal-axis rotor shafts. Little is known and shown about the vertical axis rotavators and thereby very little documentation is available on the performance of the vertical rotavator and or very few studies have been conducted on comparative performance of vertical rotavators with horizontal rotavators. Vertical and horizontal axis rotavators were tested in two different fields having 11.78 % and 10.51 % moisture contents. Their performance results were analyzed in terms of tilling quality of soil and machine performance. The effects of two operating parameters namely tilling depth and operating speed on soil physical properties like soil mean weight diameter, soil penetration resistance, bulk density and soil disturbed area were evaluated. Machine performance parameters like fuel consumption, energy requirement, field efficiency and operating cost were also determined. Better performance in terms of tilling quality of soil was obtained by using vertical axis rotavator at field no.l with soil moisture content 11.78 %. The average values of soil mean weight diameter, cone index, bulk density and the percentage of soil disturbed area were found to be 4.00 and 4.72 mm; 53.00 and 56.20 kPa; 1.18 and 1.22 g/cm3 and 94.43 and 91.19 % by using vertical and horizontal axis rotavator, respectively. The average values of fuel consumption, energy requirement, field efficiency and operating cost were found to be 15.60 and 13.20 1/ha; 958.23 and 816.47 MJ/ha; 87.61 and 86.11 % and Rs 1900 and 1500 per ha for vertical and horizontal axis rotavators, respectively. Vertical rotavator was found better based on quality of work, while from economic point of view, the horizontal rotavator was found better. The optimum tilling depth and operating speed were found to be 10 cm and 2.71 km/h respectively for both the rotavators.