Application of pesticides and herbicides by means of agricultural sprayers is one of the most important field operations. Field undulations transmitted from the tractor to the boom, result in spray boom motions. The most important spray boom motions affecting the spray distribution pattern are rolling, yawing and jolting. To reduce boom roll, passive suspension systems are employed, making use of gravity as a reference to maintain the boom parallel to the soil. In this paper a suspension to reduce roll is developed having a controller such that automatically the slope of the field is followed, adding damping at the resonance frequency and switching off at the high frequencies such that the nice attenuation properties of the passive suspension at high frequencies is preserved. Therefore it is called a slow active suspension as the controller only corrects the passive suspension in the low frequency range. Concerning the horizontal boom vibrations yawing and jolting, a full active suspension is designed, shaping the transfer function of vibrations caused by the tractor to the accelerations measured on the boom as a band-stop characteristic.
Active spray-boom stabilisation
Aktive Stabilisierung von Spritzgestängen
2001
6 Seiten, 6 Bilder, 12 Quellen
Conference paper
English