New design for moldboard plough:Double sided moldboard plough

Moldboard plough is quite widely used as a tillage tool in the conventional tillage system by farmers in the world. Farmer needs to get in the field either in the middle of the field or at the end of the field to till the soil with right-handed moldboard plough (RHP) since this plough only inverts the soil to the right side, this makes open or ridge furrow in the middle of the land. Beside this, working efficiency of the RHP and fuel consumption efficiency due to this unnecessary travel in the field decrease. To eliminate the disadvantages of the RHP, reversible plough (RP) is used. RP inverts the soil on both sides to get the right surface land. RP needs powerful tractor comparing to RHP due to its weight and farmer can not afford buying RP since its price is quite higher than the RHP. In this PhD thesis which was supported by Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology, new design of moldboard plough named Double Sided Moldboard Plough (DSP) was developed alternative to the RHP and RP. DSP does not require a powerful tractor due to its lighter weight than RP and its working efficiency is as same as RP since it inverts the soil on both sides, by that way, it keeps the land leveled. In order to avoid the disadvantages of the RHP and at the same time to use the advantages of the RP, new design of moldboard plough was developed. To examine if the new design is functioning well, new model plough with 50% scale was taken to the preliminary tests and was found successful. In this project, double sided 3 new 1:1 scale prototype moldboard plough which substitutes the RP and avoids its disadvantages, with light weight was designed and made in the shop. Then the most suitable model was selected and its working parameters were measured in field conditions to determine its performance according to the RHP and RP.To determine the working parameters of the ploughs, soil was ploughed at 25 cm depth with three different working speeds (2.8, 4.0 and 4.9 km/h) in sandy loam soil in research field of Menemen Research, Application and Production Farm, Faculty of Agriculture, Ege University. Field experiments were conducted in two stages. In the first stage, ploughs were tested by mounting on the frame of tractor's three point hitch on which load cells are mounted for measuring draft. Ploughs were tested with three different speeds and during the experiment specific fuel consumptions, slip and draftof the ploughs were measured. In the second stage, working efficiencies of ploughs mounted directly to the tractor's three point hitch were measured at optimum speed of 3.6 km/h by detaching the frame of tractor's three point hitch on which load cells are mounted for measuring draft. Parcel size was taken according to the ratio of 2 which is length by width. According to the results; draft requirements of the ploughs were found statistically significant according to the plough types and tillage speeds. The highest specific draft was measured on DSP as 53.59 kN/m2, whereas RHP had the lowest specific draft of 32.71 kN/m2. The specific draft of RP was measured as 43.27 kN/m2. Fuel consumption values of ploughs were also found statistically important. The average fuel consumption of DSP for all three speeds were the highest as 31.44 l/ha while fuel consumptions of RHP was the lowest as 24.5 l/ha and RP required 27.27 l/ha fuel consumption. The highest working efficiency was found on RP as 0.43 ha/h, RHP had the lowest value as 0.28 ha/h although it had the highest tillage speed. Working efficiency of DSP was measured as 0.33 ha/h which was lower than RP. When we look at closely to the results of the working parameters; it seems obvious that some improvements should be made on DSP. With careful manufacturing and improvements, DSP will be an alternative to the RP because of its price and material advantage.