Study on a Pipeline Tension Detection Method for Aero-pipeline Spraying System in Paddy Field

Aero-Pipeline Spraying System is a special ultra-working-width precision pesticide sprayer, which can broaden working scope, improve working efficiency, precisely transfer feed liquid to farm field that need to be sprayed, spray pesticides to crops in a very close range, and then improve working precision and reduce the losses of liquid materials such as pesticides. During the ultra-working-width spraying operations in paddy fields, the suspension spraying aero-pipeline unable to automatically retractable, are prone to sagging and winding, then it affect the operational efficiency and spraying effect. The Aero-Pipeline Tension Detection System (APTDS) is the essential part of the ultra-working-width paddy field pesticide sprayer. The pipeline can maintain a tension state through an automatic winding system based on the APTDS. It is very useful to expand the working width and to improve the working efficiency of the ultra-working-width paddy field pesticide sprayer. RESULTS: An APTDS based on the C8051F040 MCU was developed, include the power system, the tension sensors, the conditioning circuits for the sensors and the motor control system. The tension sensors were calibrated by a linear equation. The program of the tension detection and the motor control system were developed by programming language C51. The results showed that the average errors of the tension detection used by the APTDS was about 1.8N, the standard deviation was about 0.6548N, and the response time from the tension detection to the operation of the automatic retracting was about 100ms. CONCLUSIONS: The presented APTDS based on C8051F040 single chip microcomputer basically satisfies the ultra-working-width spraying requirements of the paddy field pesticide sprayer.