Effect of incident angle on wheat soil-ripping parameters by pneumatic seeding

Rice-wheat rotation area, with heavy clay soil texture, that it is wheat planting area accounts for more than 37% of the total wheat sowing area in China as one of the major grain production bases, and rice-wheat rotation is the main cropping pattern in this region. Meanwhile, because of the shortage crop stubble and more rainfall in autumn, which lead to serious wet damage during the tilling and seeding stage for this field. Currently, most of the existing no-tillage and less-tillage seeding equipment for wheat sowing in rice stubble areas were optimized and developed on the basis of traditional contact-type wheat seeding technology, which lead to adhesion and serious blockage phenomenon, as well as increasing of operating resistance and power consumption during working. Therefore, a innovative technical proposal of non-contact type pneumatic seeding technology that could avoid contacting between sowing parts and soil was introduced in this paper, which in order to solve the problems of soil adhesion, blockage, drag increment as well as poor sowing quality for wheat seeders under the condition of sticky heavy loam clay in rice-wheat rotation areas. Experiment that utilized a self-made platform for wheat pneumatic seeding was conducted, which could rip wheat seed into the soil condition of clean seed bed without straw and stubble mulching by high pressure accelerating airflow. During the pneumatic seeding experiment, keeping a certain pneumatic seeding height and incident angle between the accelerating tube and topsoil surface, high-pressure gas was injected from the upper apex of the air nozzle and ejected from the bottom of it, which a stable high-speed airflow was formed in the accelerator tube (the length of the accelerator tube is 600 mm and the diameter is 10 mm). Then wheat seeds were put into the seed entrance and absorbed at a high speed under the negative air pressure of the ejector, during which the rubber sleeve could protect wheat seeds from damaging. After mixing with airflow, wheat seeds were accelerated by high-speed air flow in the accelerating tube. Finally, the wheat seeds flew out and ripped into the soil at a certain incident angle and high pneumatic seeding velocity. At the same time, high-speed photography technology was used to study the parameters of pneumatic seeding velocity, vertical velocity and pneumatic seeding depth under six levels (15°, 30°, 45°, 60°, 75°, 90°) of incident angles, and pneumatic seeding experiments under five different accelerating air pressures of 0.2 MPa, 0.4 MPa, 0.6 MPa, 0.8 MPa and 1 MPa for each incident angle were carried out respectively. Pneumatic seeding experimental results showed that: For pneumatic seeding in soil without straw and stubble mulching, when the incident angle increases continuously, wheat seeds can achieve higher vertical component of pneumatic seeding velocity deeper and pneumatic seeding depth at the same accelerating air pressures, the probability of horizontal slip and bounce of wheat seeds after touching soil show an decreasing trend, and pneumatic seeding depth has a positive correlation with pneumatic seeding velocity under each incident angle. Moreover, wheat seeds show various pneumatic seeding depth and soil impact effect without damage after pneumatic seeding. When the incident angles and the vertical component of pneumatic seeding velocity were more than 45° and 25 m/s respectively, wheat seeds can be completely ripped into the soil and the emergence rate is more than 86%. The best pneumatic seeding effect achieved as incident angle is 90°. In order to realize wheat vertical pneumatic seeding in field operation, the horizontal component of pneumatic seeding velocity should be equal to the operating speed of seeder and the vertical component of pneumatic seeding velocity should be greater than 25 m/s, which the seeder operating speed shows positively and negatively correlated with pneumatic seeding velocity and incident angle, respectively. The experimental results can provide basic data and technical support for the development of non-contact wheat seeding equipment in rice-wheat rotation area.