Parameter calibration for the discrete element simulation model of commercial organic fertilizer

The application of organic fertilizer can effectively alleviate soil hardening and reduce environmental pollution, which is very important for the sustainable development of agriculture (Dong et al., 2010). With the development of ecological agriculture, the challenge of agricultural non-point source pollution control has resulted in the more widespread application of commercial organic fertilizer (Jiang et al., 2018). Commercial organic fertilizer is different from other fertilizers in terms of friction and flow characteristics due to the differences in moisture and chemical composition (Huang et al., 2017), while the existing feeders for commercial organic fertilizer produce a poor performance. In the process of fertilization, the discrete element method (DEM) has been widely used to study the interaction of typical bulk materials like soil, seed and fertilizer with agricultural equipment, as well as the relevant movement states (Huang et al., 2016; Liu et al., 2018; Hu et al., 2016; Molenda et al., 2011). In a discrete element simulation analysis, the accuracy of the parameters for the particle material model is the key to the reliability of the simulation (Zhong et al., 2009; Han et al., 2014; Gallego et al., 2020). However, the parameters for contact between materials in © 2021 Institute of Agrophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences