Numerical Simulation and Verification of Seed-Filling Performance of Single-Bud Billet Sugarcane Seed-Metering Device Based on EDEM
Meimei Wang, Qingting Liu, Yinggang Ou, Xiaoping Zou
Abstract
The seed filling of a seed-metering device is a critical process in sugarcane cultivation operations. To analyze the contact between billets, the related mechanical components, and the law of billets movement in the seed-metering device, a simulation of the seed-filling process based on EDEM was proposed, and a geometric model of the seed-metering device, a particle model, and a contact model were established by EDEM software. The physical experimental results and simulation results of the angle of repose were compared. The experimental results showed that the relative error of the angle of repose experiment was 6.67%, which verified the effectiveness of the material parameters of single-bud billet; the linear correlation coefficient of the seed-filling experiment was 0.762 for Sq and 0.869 for Se, which demonstrated the validity of using EDEM software to simulate the seed-filling process. Finally, the velocity and force of the particles in the seed-filling process were analyzed in EDEM. The analysis results indicated that there are two circulation circles in the seed box, and the larger the circulation circle, the easier the billets enter the rake bar. The EDEM simulation provides a basis for optimizing the structure and parameters of the sugarcane billet planter in future work.