Development Of Small Tracked Vehicle For Banana Transportation In Field

Banana is an important industry in south of C hina. In the way of banana harvesting, some banana growers in extensive plantation use cableway transportation, and most of those in small and medium-sized plantation are still using the traditional manual harvesting methods. This way not only with low efficiency, high labor intensity, but also easy to cause bananas collision and result in low commercialization rate. In view of the traditional manual harvesting way, this author of this paper designed and developed a small track vehicle for banana transportation in field. Compared with wheeled vehicle, tracked vehicle has the advantages of reducing the ground pressure, increasing off road performance and having stronger carrying capacity. In that case, tracked vehicle will be more suitable for working in the banana fields. The main contents of paper are as follows:(1)Determinate the working way and power source of transport vehicle after considering the difficulty and complexity of banana transportation in field according to the survey data. Confirm the mode of transportation and the suspension system after considering non-destruction transport;(2)Determinate the overall design and three-dimensional size of track vehicle according to the planting layout of bananas. Design geometric model of track vehicle by using the Solidworks2015 software and analyze the key parts of the suspension system by using finite element analysis;(3)Determinate the parameters of sprockets, carrier rollers, idlers, road wheels, track shoes of the track working device. The Low-Mobility track transport toolkit in multi-body dynamics simulation software Recur DynV8R3 is used to build multi-body dynamics of the track working device model. After frame geometry model was loaded, the virtual prototype of track vehicle for banana transportation was built. At the same time, three kinds of banana plantation types which are rigid, clay and sandy loam terrains were established;(4)Simulated analysis on the transport performance of track vehicles, Comparative analysis on three kinds of ground, simulated analysis on straight running, turning, climbing and obstacle crossing to explore the transportation capacity of track vehicles;(5)Through the force analysis on banana straw, find out the optimal condition on fixing straw : 70 mm straw diameter, 50 mm/min loading speed,10 mm diameter of the rod, 80 mm depth of the straw;(6)By testing the stability of physical prototype, find out the optimal condition on banana transportation: 3.4 km/h running speed, 775 mm suspension height and dwarf banana. At this point, the average inclination angle is 13.38 degrees, and the time is 81.501 seconds.