On the fertilizer particle motion along the vane of a centrifugal spreader disc assuming pure sliding of the particle

Abstract

At present, spreading of mineral fertilizers in Europe is most commonly performed using centrifugal disk spreaders with attached vanes. The motion of an ideal spherical homogeneous fertilizer particle along the straight vane attached to a flat rotating disc was analyzed in this paper. The analysis was performed in the non-inertial reference coordinate system. From the assumptions introduced to enable analytical describing of the real particle motion as well as the general tools of solid mechanics, the ordinary in-homogenous second-order differential equation having constant coefficients arose. Its solution represents an approximation of the real relative motion of the fertilizer particle along the straight radial vane fixed to the flat horizontal disc rotating at a constant angular velocity. However, the solution of this kind can be very useful for the optimization of centrifugal spreader working parameters.

Keywords

• fertilizer particle
• centrifugal disc spreader
• radial vanes
• differential equation