Rotary Tiller's Blade Design using Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
Subrata Kr. Mandal1, Dr. Basudeb Bhattacharyya1, Dr. Somenath Mukherjee1, Dr. A. Maity2
Citation : Subrata Kr. Mandal, Dr. Basudeb Bhattacharyya, Dr. Somenath Mukherjee, Dr. A. Maity, Rotary Tiller's Blade Design using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) International Journal of Modern Studies in Mechanical Engineering 2015, 1(1) : 19-26
The continuous increase in fossil fuels price has resulted substantial and tremendous increase in the cost of land preparation. This has direct effect on the food pricing which in turns results in considerable increase in the cost. The situation is worsened by the prevalent use of the conventional tillage system in the preparation of seedbeds, particularly for deep tillage. This system of tillage escalates land preparation costs because it requires a series of operations using passive tillage tools to realize an acceptable tilth quality. It also ties down capital in the form of additional machinery and tillage tools; thus increasing significantly the cost of land preparation. Rotary tiller is a most suitable tillage machine designed for seedbed preparation. Blades are the main critical parts of a rotary tiller, which are engaged with soil to prepare the land. These blades interact with soil in a different way than normal plows which are subjected to impact and high friction which ultimately creates unbalancing and non uniform forces on the rotary tiller which results wearing of the blades as a whole. The continuous fluctuating impact of soil crust / clods / stone develops high stress areas on blade tip or blade critical edges. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the design of blade so that these blades experience less stress. This paper aims at design optimization of rotary tiller blades using modern tools like FEA.