Tillage in the agricultural sector is characterised by high abrasive wear losses [3], where various tillage tools (cultivators, chisels, ploughshares, etc.) are used for weed control and seedbed conditions. The EU policy supports no-tillage technology, which mostly uses soil ripper to cut the soil. The shape of the soil ripper highly affects the energy consumption during processing [4]. The project suggests a new strategy to use the knowledge of ship construction and transfer it to solve the problems of soil cultivation. It is not new that ship construction incorporates a bulbous bow which reduces fuel consumption by 12-15%, increases hydrodynamic resistance, and improves plow-in phenomena [5,6]. Due to plow-in phenomena, the bulbous bow shape element can be used in soil processing machines. Given the similarities of bulbous and soil ripper movement, the ship’s bulbous bow design will be adopted in agriculture, where soil cultivation requires high energy and material consumption.
The idea of adapting the element of the ship’s bow arose a long time ago, but it did not reach the point of detailed analysis and testing. No such studies have been published and is likely that they have not been conducted. The first simulation carried out by the project implementers gave promising results, applying the bulbous idea to a soil ripper with a working depth of 20-25cm. The optimised shape of the bulbous reduces material wear losses during the soil processing due to the high soil abrasiveness. Another issue to be addressed is to minimize energy use while ensuring the quality of soil disturbance during tillage. Therefore, the project aims to design and study in laboratory and field conditions a new soil ripper element whose concept is based on the ship’s bulbous bow shape.
Project funding:
Research Council of Lithuania (RCL), Projects of Postdoctoral fellowships funded by the state budget of the Republic of Lithuania
Period of project implementation: 2024-02-19 - 2026-02-18
Project coordinator: Kaunas University of Technology
