• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.24-29
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• 2020

In South Korea, agricultural mechanization has been carried out in paddy field, but not in the upland field during recent decades. Among crops such as root vegetables, leafy vegetables from upland field, corn is used as forage for livestock as well as food for men. The corn harvester needs to be developed to replace men's labor in rural area to follow the recent needs in the farm industry. The corn harvester is comprised of three parts such as cutting part, feeding part and pick-up part. The feeding part is so long for cut corns to be delivered from the cutting part to the pick-up part. Structurally, the load from the long moment arm is likely to be big. Thus, the setup to measure the stress on the duct of the feeding part was configured with the data acquisition system. The strain gages were attached on several points that seem to be loaded a lot comparatively. The stress was measured and the measured stresses were divided by the yield stress to get the safety factor. And then, we made sure the safety factors were above 1 on the all points. In conclusion, the feeding part of the corn harvester which convey the cut corn from the cutting part from the pick-up part can be regarded to be made safe structurally.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.40-46
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• 2023

Fresh corn, one of the main food crops, must be harvested by hand. A harvest mechanization technology is required. In this study, a tractor-attached harvester was designed and manufactured to sequentially perform stem reaping, fresh corn detaching, and collecting. The(harvester was designed so that the main device could operate through a hydraulic pump and a generator could be operated through the tractor's PTO. Factor tests were conducted according to cultivars (Ilmichal, Super sweet corn) and working speed (0.12 m/s, 0.17, 0.22). After the factor test, detached corns ratio, collected corns ratio, and damaged corns ratio were analyzed and harvest performance was evaluated. Harvesting performance was good for super sweet corn. Considering operation efficiency, 0.22 m/s was judged to be an appropriate working speed. It was found that it took two hours to work an area of 10 a.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.408-417
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• 2016

Purpose: Yield monitoring systems are an essential component of precision agriculture. They indicate the spatial variability of crop yield in fields, and have become an important factor in modern harvesters. The objective of this paper was to review research trends related to yield monitoring sensors for grain crops. Methods: The literature was reviewed for research on the major sensing components of grain yield monitoring systems. These major components included grain flow sensors, moisture content sensors, and cutting width sensors. Sensors were classified by sensing principle and type, and their performance was also reviewed. Results: The main targeted harvesting grain crops were rice, wheat, corn, barley, and grain sorghum. Grain flow sensors were classified into mass flow and volume flow methods. Mass flow sensors were mounted primarily at the clean grain elevator head or under the grain tank, and volume flow sensors were mounted at the head or in the middle of the elevator. Mass flow methods used weighing, force impact, and radiometric approaches, some of which resulted in measurement error levels lower than 5% ($R^2=0.99$). Volume flow methods included paddle wheel type and optical type, and in the best cases produced error levels lower than 3%. Grain moisture content sensing was in many cases achieved using capacitive modules. In some cases, errors were lower than 1%. Cutting width was measured by ultrasonic distance sensors mounted at both sides of the header dividers, and the errors were in some cases lower than 5%. Conclusions: The design and fabrication of an integrated yield monitoring system for a target crop would be affected by the selection of a sensing approach, as well as the layout and mounting of the sensors. For accurate estimation of yield, signal processing and correction measures should be also implemented.