Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
Department of Agricultural Machinery and Power Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt.
2
Department of Agricultural Products Process Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt
Abstract
Landscape plays a vital role in maintaining ecological balance and minimizing the consequences of global warming and due to increased demand for turfgrass and a shortage of servicing machinery for various stages of mechanization required for construction of landscaping, particularly cultivating machines, as well as the manual planting of turfgrass is exhaustive, time-consuming and costly. So, the current study aims to develop and manufacture a turfgrass planting machine, testing its performance, and investigate its operating costs. In the present study, seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum Sw.) was used. The developed turfgrass planting machine was tested in sandy soil by studying the following variables: forward speed, applied load, and size of turfgrass sprigs. Results showed that the planting depth increased by decreasing the forward speeds (from 4.40 to 1.15 km/h) and increasing the load (from 100 to 200 kg). Additionally, increasing the size of the sprigs reduced planting depth because larger sprigs have more resistance to planting process. For small, medium, and large turfgrass sprigs, the highest planting efficiencies were 99.00, 96.84, and 77.24% with actual performance rates of 0.171, 0.165, and 0.154 fed/h, fuel consumption rates of 1.90, 2.02, and 2.24 L/fed, and
field efficiencies of 62.36, 60.63, and 56.30% respectively. Whereas the operational costs of the developed machine were 44.98, 45.09, and 45.26 LE/h, while the turfgrass planting costs were 263.43, 272.85, and 293.58 LE/fed, respectively at forward speed of 1.15 km/h and applied load of 200 kg.
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