Abstract:
Uprightness can be one of the most important indicators in the process of garlic mechanized sowing. However, the conventional duckbill sowing device has been one of the key bottlenecks in garlic mechanized sowing, due to its structural defects. Among them, the collapse of seeds can be triggered by the failure of the inner wall support during the opening of the traditional duckbill. It is still lacking in the high uprightness of the garlic seeds during sowing, resulting in low planting quality and yield. This study aims to improve the stability of the garlic‐seed uprightness using structural modifications. A quantitative analysis was made to explore the influence of the pre‐added soil on the attitude stability of the garlic seeds; A dynamic interaction model was constructed for the soil–device–seed under the new opening structure; A series of tests were carried out to verify and optimize the different structural parameters for the high sowing quality; According to the discrete element method (EDEM 2021), an interaction model was constructed to contain the soil, the duckbill device, and Cangshan garlic cloves. Hertz–Mindlin (no slip) contact model and inter‐particle parallel bonding were employed to simulate the cohesion and properties of the spherical soil particles. The distribution of the particle size was set as 0.5-2.0 mm. A two-stage experimental design was adopted after optimization. In the first stage, the attitude was systematically analyzed in the percentage height of the garlic seeds buried in the pre-added soil (five gradients: 0, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). In the second stage, two types of perforated structures—Transverse and Longitudinal—were selected to regulate the soil inflow by the varying hole width (6.5 mm), hole length (30 and 25 mm for the Transverse structure, 40 mm for the Longitudinal structure). Finally, a bench test was carried out to quantitatively analyze the test data via image processing using a high-speed camera. The results showed that the pre-added soil shared a significant regulatory effect on the seed stability. In the virtual simulation, when the pre-burial rates were 0, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%, the average decreases in the seed uprightness were 33°, 22°, 10°, 4°, and 3°, respectively. The rate of decrease was diminished, as the pre-burial rate increased. In the bench-top validation, the corresponding decreases were 38°, 26°, 13°, 6°, and 4°, respectively. Notably, the decrease in the uprightness tended to stabilize under both conditions at the pre-burial rates ≥ 75%. After structural optimization, the Transverse perforated design (top hole 30 mm and bottom hole 25 mm) was achieved at an 87.5% pre-burial rate at a 6.5 mm hole width. While the longitudinal perforated design (hole length 40 mm) was achieved at 77.5%. Bench-top measurements were obtained with the actual pre-burial rates of 80% (transverse) and 72% (longitudinal), respectively. Compared with the traditional non-perforated structure, the Transverse perforated device improved the seed uprightness by 59.27%, and the longitudinal by 44.05%, fully meeting the theoretical predictions. The localized perforated duckbill structure effectively alleviated the support failure during the opening stage of the traditional device, when introducing a controllable soil‐compensation mechanism. Theoretical analysis and experimental validation demonstrated that the two-segment transverse perforated structure improved the seed-clove uprightness by 59.27%. These findings can provide a promising technical path for the profiling mechanisms in the precision garlic sowing equipment. The important engineering value can also be provided to advance the mechanical planting of economic crops