Dimensions Design Of Linkage Transplanting Mechanism For Transplanter Working On Mountainous

Transplanting is considered an important component in crop production. In order to reduce labor intensity, improve production efficiency and ensure the quality of jobs, seedling-transplanting mechanization should be widely used. Therefore, the transplanters, which adapt to crops requirements, need to be developed. Moreover, transplanting machine, which influence the transplanting performance, is considered the core part of the transplanter. So, designing the transplanting machine meeting the agronomic requirements is considered very important.A way of design a transplanting mechanism meeting the agronomic requirements for the transplanter is proposed in this paper. Planar linkage mechanism is considered to have simple structure and various forms. In addition, complex curves can be achieved by planar linkage mechanism. Therefore, four-bar linkage and five-bar linkage are designed to realize the transplanting track. The optimal synthesis is used to find the linkage mechanism, which meets the agronomic requirement. Variable target points are used to optimize. The location of track in horizontal orientation is not fixed. However, the location of track in vertical direction is fixed. Therefore, the variable track, moving in horizontal orientation, is designed. The variable target points, on the moving track, are got. Moreover, the search range will be expanded by using variable target points. Optimization method is divided into two levels. On the whole scale, genetic algorithm is used to find the dimensions of linkage mechanism. On the individual scale, the points on the track closest to the target points should be found by optimization, before objective function, used in genetic algorithm, calculated. So, the points on the track will be less influenced by the boot angular deviation and the velocity deviation. Therefore, search performance is improved by two levels optimization. In order to further improve the search performance of genetic algorithms, multiple-population genetic algorithm is used on the whole scale optimization. The entire design process is described in this article:First, the transplanting target path can be found by analysis the transplanting process. Next, the variable target points can be found in the transplanting target path. Then the formulas of displacement, boot angular and velocity in the points on the track can be found by kinematics analysis of linkage mechanism. Then, the objective function is composed by displacement deviation, boot angular deviation and velocity deviation between the target points and the points on the track. In addition, the design parameters are composed by the parameters of linkage mechanism. At last, linkage mechanism will be got to meet the agronomic requirements by optimization. Also the relationship between the forward speed of transplanter and the transplanting performance is found by derivation of formulas. It is got by the relationship that the speed fluctuation of transplanter has less effect to the transplanting performance. Moreover, an example is calculated. The agronomic requirements can basically met by the result.Different agronomic requirements, such as the depth of planting, are required by different crops. Therefore, different transplanting mechanisms are required. Different linkage mechanisms can be designed to meet the different crop agronomic requirements by using the procedure described in this article.