Design of a mechanical system for tillage tool depth control on small farm tractor

Tractor implements increase the risk of injury by destabilizing the tractor, and therefore they must be designed with caution and mechanical integrity. Tillage tool attachment systems must be designed to determine a tool's maximum depth into the soil and withstand the resulting forces from the soil. The following paper presents a design for an attachment system that incorporates a self-locking rack and pinion jack, load-bearing sliding surfaces, and rack clamp that is used to secure the cultivator sweep. The design is evaluated for deformation and deflection at the maximum theoretical loads using Finite Element Analysis. The design successfully minimizes deflection, but exhibits stresses higher than the material yield stress in a small area. After slight modifications to the bar attachment structure in a future design iteration, the tillage tool design will be ready to test in the field.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Porter, Elizabeth (Elizabeth C.)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Amos Winter.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112548

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/112548