Design & Development of Rotavator blade: Interrogation of CAD Method

Abstract

Agricultural land preparation cost has increased to a new high label due to increase in fossil fuel prices. This directly increases the cost of food. Demand of food also increases due to high population rise and smaller land sizes (< 2-4 ha) due to fragmentation of land. So farmers are more interested to reduce the land preparation cost and increase the yield. Due to these facts, preparation of seedbeds for deep tillage in conventional tillage system, particularly in Indian farming, the situation is worsening day by day. This system of tillage escalates land preparation costs because it requires a series of operations using passive tillage tools to realize an acceptable till 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 or rotavator is a tillage machine most suitable for seedbed preparation. In a Rotary tiller, Blades are the main critical parts 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 that creates unbalancing and non uniform forces which result in blade wear. This actually decreases the service life of a blade. Therefore, it is necessary to design and develop a suitable blade so that self life is enhanced. This paper presents design and development of rotavator blade through the interrogation of computer aided design (CAD) method.