DESIGN AND EXPERIMENT OF SEED-FILLING COMPONENT FOR RICE HOLE SEEDER

Abstract

The core equipment of rice dry direct-seeding with film mulching devices shows poor adaptability to rice varieties, struggling to accommodate diverse seeding quantity for both hybrid and conventional rice varieties. A seed-filling component with unilateral and bilateral seed-filling function was designed to solve this challenge. Through theoretical analysis the key structural parameters of the seed-filling component were determined. Then Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulations were conducted to analyze the seeding performance, leading to the identification of optimal parameters for orifice width and orifice deflection angle of the seed-filling component, which are 7.7 to 8.5 mm and 1.71 to 2.41 degrees, respectively. Bench experiments using the central composite design indicates that the optimal parameters for the seed-filling component's orifice width and orifice deflection angle are 8.1 mm and 1.99 degrees, respectively. In the optimal combination of orifice parameters, for unilateral seed-filling in hybrid rice, the miss-seeding rate is 4%, the qualified rate is 84.8%, and the reseeding rate is 11.2%. For bilateral seed-filling in conventional rice, the miss-seeding rate is 4.2%, the qualified rate is 85.2%, and the reseeding rate is 10.6%. The result of field hole-seeding with film mulching is consistent with the result of indoor bench experiments, demonstrating that the seed-filling component of the hole seeder can meet the seeding requirements for rice precision direct-seeding with film mulching. This paper provides theoretical reference for the design and optimization of the seed-filling component for rice hole-seeding equipment.