DESIGN AND DISCRETE ELEMENT SIMULATION OF A BIOMIMETIC WEEDING DEVICE MODELLED ON A CRAB CLAW TOE

Abstract

ABSTRACT As weeds cannot be eradicated in corn fields, a crab claw toe was used as the research object and combined with the agronomic requirements of corn fields to design a bionic weed claw suitable for corn fields. The contour curve of the crab claw toe was extracted and fitted through the Matlab image processing technology and fitting tool to establish a bionic claw finger 3D model using Solid works. According to the mechanical soil dynamics theory of dynamics analysis, the root–soil aggregates are easily broken, loosened, and drained under the action of the bionic claw fingers. Based on single image inverse reconstruction technology, the weed root system–soil aggregates discrete meta-model was established. Recur Dyn was used in the bionic weed claw kinematics simulation to verify the reliability of the movement of the mechanism and to realise the expected action of the weeding operation. We analysed the movement speed, displacement, and trajectory of soil particles in different depth layers through the joint simulation and comparison test. Using the mechanism of weeding and resistance reduction of the bionic weeding claw, under the same working conditions, the average resistance reduction rate of the bionic claw finger compared with the flat claw finger in the grasping process was 16.4%. The resistance of grass roots was reduced 23.3%, making it easier to pull out the more intact grass roots.

Keywords

• crab claw toe
• bionic weeding claw
• discrete element
• inverse reconstruction
• joint simulation