• 대한인간공학회지
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• 제30권4호
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• pp.541-550
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• 2011

Objective: The objective of this study is to present varying cases of ergonomic improvements in equipments for agricultural work. Background: In Korean agricultural sector, many older people and females, who may be more vulnerable to musculoskeletal diseases than young males, are doing high stressful tasks such as manual materials tasks, harvesting, etc. For reducing the work stress of the farmers, the Korean government has been performing support projects to provide the farmers with agricultural implements specified for their crops. In the projects, ergonomics experts have participated and helped modify the equipments. Method: Fifty cases of equipment improvements, which were carried out in 33 farming organizations cultivating 13 different crops, were reviewed and presented by equipments and their parts. Results: In total, 283 cases of improvements for 12 equipments including 4-wheel, 1-wheel, and 3-wheel powered carts, grass cutter, conveyer, pest control machine, and so on, were presented. The improvements were also classified according to the ergonomic principles like compatibility, ease of use, safety and fitting to the anthropometry, etc. Frequencies of improvements by equipment and its part were the highest in carts and controls, respectively. Principles of safety and ease of use were adopted more frequently in improving equipments than others. Conclusion: The tables of examples of improvements of agricultural implements are main results of this study and the systematical summaries are expected to be widely used in the development of more improved agricultural implements. Application: The results could be used as practical guidelines in ergonomically developing and modifying agricultural implements by both the experts and non-experts in ergonomics. The improvements would contribute to reduction of stress in farm work, which result in increasing the level of safety and health of Korean agricultural society.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제35권3호
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• pp.163-168
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• 2010

With income growth and "well-being" trends, sales of corn has been increased recently. Corns are processed at processing facilities on the main production site. Corn processing steps include removing bract, steaming, vacuum packing, and storing. To replace manual corn bract removing, some bract removing machines were imported and used. However, the machines were abandoned shortly, because of high damaging ratio of corns. In this research, factors of successful bract removing was studied with rotating rollers and air-injection nozzles to develop corn bract removing system. The test device was composed of a cylindrical roller, an air spray nozzle, a regulator, and a motor. Designing factors were roller type, diameter of air spraying nozzle, spraying angle, and spraying pressure. The measured factors were bract removing rate and damaging rate. It was found that optimum cylindrical roller surface shape was cylindrical roller and linear grove roller. This roller shape produced lowest damaging rate. Test results of the efficacy of preprocessing showed that the air spraying after preprocessing produced highest performance. The rotational speed and inclination of the roller didn't affect the bract removing performance. Optimum injection angle of the air jet nozzle was $70^{\circ}$. To increase bract removing rate and to reduce corn damage, required injection pressure and injection nozzle diameter were decided to less than 0.4 MPa and 2.5 mm, respectively. More than 3 times of nozzle passing produced good bract removing performance and there were no significant difference between the number of passing times.

• 대한인간공학회지
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• 제29권2호
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• pp.225-239
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• 2010

A high prevalence of farmer's work-related musculo-skeletal disorders (MSDs) have been reported in precedent studies. Risk factors - physical, chemical, biological, ergonomic risk factor etc. - in farm-work were identified by previous studies. To prevent farmers from exposing to them and reduce, Agricultural Safety Technology were introduced and used on farm. The purpose of this study is to review and summarize the agricultural safety technology on farm in Korea. According to strategy principles, this technology is classified as four criteria - workload reduction by reducing awkward posture, workload reduction by using manual material handling aids, Comfort improvement by protecting worker from hot, cold environment and work efficiency improvement by workplace redesign and cultivation modification. This technology includes transporting tools, working cloth, personal protective equipment, and pesticide-proof Clothing. Anthropometric study of Korean farmers was also carried out to support the development of equipment and clothes. In long terms, it needs to precaution activity from risk factors by using cultivation modification and working improvement. Although working condition gets better and workload reduce by this technology, it required customized safety technology in each crops - rice cultivation, horticulture and livestock farming. And farmers should use the assistive technology and participate voluntarily in ergonomic intervention program.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제35권6호
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• pp.367-372
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• 2010

Consumption of pepper, a major spice vegetable used for seasoning Kimchi, continues to increase, but cultivation is in decline due to shortage of rural labor in Korea. The 39.2% of total labor requirement for conventional pepper cultivation was available for harvesting work. Therefore conventional manual harvesting should be turned to mechanical harvesting for labor-saving, cost-reducing and easy work. Surveys on conventional pepper cultivation patterns, labor requirements for various pepper cultivation works, and farmers' opinions on the mechanization of pepper harvesting were conducted to obtain basic informations. The labor requirement for pepper harvesting was 954 h/ha out of a total labor requirement of 2,436 h/ha for pepper cultivation. Harvesting was the hardest work, and hiring workmen for harvesting was also difficult. Farmers preferred to develop a small-scale pepper harvester using agricultural tractor or cultivar. Most farmer agreed to change cultivation pattern for mechanization of pepper harvesting, but hesitated to adopt new one-time-harvesting pepper varieties.

• 한국농공학회논문집
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• 제63권4호
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• pp.97-104
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• 2021

Despite the practical limitations of calculating the amount of inflow and supply related to the operation of agricultural reservoirs, the role of agricultural reservoirs is gradually being emphasized. In particular, as interest in disaster safety has increased, the demand for preliminary measures to prepare for disasters has been rising, for instance, pre-discharging agricultural reservoirs for flood control. The aim of this study is to analyze the plans for the flood season reservoir operation considering pre-discharge period and water level limit. Accordingly, we optimized the simulation of daily storage using the ratio correction factor (RCFs) and analyzed the amount of inflow and supply using K-HAS. In addition we developed the drought determination coefficient (k) as a indicator of water availability and applied it for supplementing the risk level criteria in the Drought Crisis Response Manual. The results showed that it would be difficult to set the water level limit during the flood period in the situation of little water supply for flood control in agricultural reservoirs. Therefore, it is necessary to operate the reservoir management regulations after measures such as securing additional storage water are established in the future.

• Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
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• 제5권1호
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• pp.5-9
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• 2004

This study was carried out to develop methods of reducing the effect of solar illumination on pixel gray-levels of machine vision for agricultural field use. Two kinds of monochrome CCD cameras with manual and auto-iris lenses were used to take pictures within a range of 15 to 120 klux of solar illumination. A camera having more precise automatic control functions gave much better result. Four kinds of indices using pixel gray-level of the $99\%$ white DRS (diffuse reflectance standard) as a reference were tried to compensate pixel gray-levels of an image for variable illumination. Coefficients of variation of the indices within a range of illumination were used as a criterion for comparison. The study concluded that an index of (A+B)/A, where A is gray-level of the $99\%$ DRS and B is gray-level of the tested material, gave the best consistency in the range of solar illumination.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제28권3호
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• pp.209-216
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• 2003

Red pepper calyx cutting devices using a impacting force by a rotational cutter were devised and tested to obtain the fundamental data for development of a calyx removal unit. Fresh red peppers with 80∼87%(w.b.) of initial moisture contents were used as experimental materials. Square and wire type of rotational cutters were used to cut the red pepper calyx and the fresh red peppers were fed into the device both manually and automatically. Three rotational speeds of 250, 500, 700rpm were selected for a square, and 1000, 1500, 1800rpm for a wire type cutter respectively. Four types of red pepper fixing unit were used in manual feeding. The cutting rate of the square type cutter was over 50% regardless the shape and specification of the cutter. For the wire type cutter, the copper wire and nylon chord could not be applied to cut the red pepper calyx because of the low cutting rate. But for the fine wire, the cutting rate was higher and the cutting mechanism was more steady than copper wire and nylon chord. The cutting rate of automatic feeding and wire type cutting unit was about 70% for all levels of the rotational speed. The cutting rate was highly related to the impacting point of red pepper in carrier box. To increase the cutting rate using the rotational cutter, a proper device and mechanism was required to keep the impacting point consistently.

• 한국농업기계학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국농업기계학회 1993년도 Proceedings of International Conference for Agricultural Machinery and Process Engineering
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• pp.478-486
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• 1993

For satisfactory greenhouse culture, environmental factors must be kept in proper conditions. Therefore, it is important to know relations between environmental conditions and greenhouse systems. In this study, the environment variations and distributions in different types of greenhouses were measured and analyzed. The elements of environment analyzed were temperature , relative humidity, illumination, carbon dioxide and wind velocity. The analyzed greenhouse types were three different types. One of them, A type, was propagation model type by government and the other one, B type, was multiple continuous arches type which was made by farmers himself. The last one, C type, was single arch type which has no environment control system without manual temperature keeping method. The results of this study can be used for reasonable greenhouse environments managements and control.

• 한국지역사회생활과학회지
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• 제18권2호
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• pp.247-263
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• 2007

This study was complied to analyze the professional agricultural techniques level and to suggest a desirable direction for the professional education system for women farmer. The research was conducted by using in-field surveys and interviews. Data was gathered by questionnaire from 147 women farmer in five specialized crop regions: strawberry, cucumber, rose, apple, and oyster mushroom. The results obtained are as follows. First, the technique levels in computer usage and electronic commerce, machinery usage, pesticide and fertilizer utilization, facility automation, and eco-agricultural cultivation were low. Second, the demand for professional education, evaluated through technique level by standard management diagnosis, was recognized. Areas of concern included: cucumber (temperature control, carbonic acid gas control, grading, funds management), strawberry (light control, soil temperature control, irrigation watering, shipping), rose (temperature control, light control, funds management, cooperated management), oyster mushroom (growth cabinet sterilizer), and apple (flower bud pinching, defloration, fruit thinning, funds management). Based on the results of this study, the following are suggestions for the planning of a professional education system for women farmer. First, it needs to address formal education in marketing, machinery usage, facilities automation, and techniques in pesticide and fertilizer utilization. Second, it needs to be a multi- level program with appropriate terminology at every level which is suitable to each age and ability of women farmer. Third, it needs a more comprehensive manual developed by need analysis of women farmer and a larger lecturer pool for professional education.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제32권6호
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• pp.408-415
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• 2007

Leaf vegetables are composed of about 80% of moisture and 20 to 30% are damaged during the transportation due to decomposition and browning. This study was conducted to develop a washing, sterilization dehydrating system that could remove these polluters, and major findings were summarized as followings. The system was constructed so that leaf vegetables were moved through the washing, sterilization, and dehydration stages contained in a box, the shifting was conducted using PLC-controlled pneumatic pressure. Basic tests for determination of design parameters led to the results that optimum washing times by air bubbles were 5 minutes for lettuce and perilla and 10 minutes for Chinese cabbage, and percentages of bacteria removed using the optimum washing times were 94, 98, and 76%, respectively. Optimum speed and time of a centrifugal dehydrator for removal surface waterdrop on the leaves were 400 rpm and 30 s, respectively, dehydration rates were in a range $70{\sim}82%$ and damage rates were within 15% for the three vegetables tested. Operating efficiencies of the developed system for lettuce, perilla, and Chinese cabbage were 100, 120, and 80 kg/h, respectively, which were 25, 24, and 27 times of operating efficiencies of the conventional manual method.