• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.27-34
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• 2023

Weeding in orchards is closely associated with productivity and quality. The customary weeding process is both labor-intensive and time-consuming. To solve the problems, there is need for automation of agricultural robots and machines in the agricultural field. On the other hand, orchards have complicated working areas due to narrow spaces between trees and amorphous terrain. Therefore, it is necessary to develop customized robot technology for unmanned weeding work within the department. This study developed a path generation and path control method for unmanned weeding according to the orchard environment. For this, the width of the weeding span, the number of operations, and the width of the weeding robot were used as input parameters for the orchard environment parameters. To generate a weeding path, a weeding robot was operated remotely to obtain GNSS-based location data along the superheated center line, and a driving performance test was performed based on the generated path. From the results of orchard field tests, the RMSE in weeding period sections was measured at 0.029 m, with a maximum error of 0.15 m. In the steering period within row and steering to the next row sections, the RMSE was 0.124 m, and 0.047 m, respectively.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.15-24
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• 2023

The aim of this study was to measure and evaluate the exhaust emission factors of agricultural tractors. Engine characteristics and three exhaust emissions (CO, NO_x, PM) were collected under actual agricultural operating conditions. Experiments were performed on idling, driving, plow tillage, and rotary tillage. The load factor (LF) was calculated using the collected engine data, and the emission factor was analyzed using the LF and exhaust emissions. The engine characteristics and exhaust emissions were significantly different for each working condition, and in particular, the LF was significantly different from the currently applied 0.48 LF. The data distribution of exhaust emissions was different depending on the engine speed. In some conditions, the emission factor was higher than the exhaust emission standards. However, since most emission limit standards are values calculated using an engine dynamometer, even if the emission factor measured under actual working conditions is higher, it cannot be regarded as wrong. It is expected that the results of this study can be used for the inventory construction of a calculation for domestic agricultural machinery emissions in the future.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.1382-1399
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• 2023

Pressure relief valve (PRV) is one of the important control valves used in nuclear power plants, and its sealing performance is crucial to ensure the safety and function of the entire pressure system. For the sealing performance improving purpose, an explicit function that accounts for all design parameters and can accurately describe the relationship between the multi-design parameters and the seal performance is essential, which is also the challenge of the valve seal design and/or optimization work. On this basis, a surrogate model-based design optimization is carried out in this paper. To obtain the basic data required by the surrogate model, both the Finite Element Model (FEM) and the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based numerical models were successively established, and thereby both the contact stresses of valve static sealing and dynamic impact (between valve disk and nozzle) could be predicted. With these basic data, the polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) surrogate model which can not only be used for inputs-outputs relationship construction, but also produce the sensitivity of different design parameters were developed. Based on the PCE surrogate model, a new design scheme was obtained after optimization, in which the valve sealing stress is increased by 24.42% while keeping the maximum impact stress lower than 90% of the material allowable stress. The result confirms the ability and feasibility of the method proposed in this paper, and should also be suitable for performance design optimizations of control valves with similar structures.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.10-18
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• 2016

A front-end loader (FEL) mounted on an agricultural tractor is one of the most commonly used implements to mechanize routine agricultural tasks. When the FEL is used with a loaded bucket, careful operation is required to maintain safety and avoid spillage when the tractor passes a bump because a change in the gravity center of the tractor due to varied loadings can affect the stability of the tractor. Use of a boom suspension system consisting of accumulators and orifice dampers can be instrumental in reducing pitching vibrations while increasing the handling performance of the FEL-mounted tractor. The objective of this research was to reduce bump shocks by adding an orifice and a flow control valve to the original hydraulic circuit composed solely of accumulators. A simulation study was performed using the SimulationX program to investigate the effects of an accumulator and an orifice-throttle damper on bump shocks. Results showed that the peak pressure on a boom cylinder and the vertical acceleration of a bucket were significantly affected by use of both an accumulator and an orifice damper. In a field test conducted with a 75-kW tractor, the peak pressure of the boom cylinder, and the root mean square (RMS) vertical acceleration of the bucket and seat were reduced by on average, 23.0, 42.2, and 44.9% respectively, as compared to those measured with the original accumulator system, showing that an improved design for the accumulator hydraulic circuit can reduce bump shocks. Further studies are needed to design a tractor suspension system that includes the effects of cabin suspension and tires as well as dynamic analysis.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.30-36
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• 2017

This paper presents a sliding mode observer-based fault detection algorithm for steering inputs of an all-terrain crane. All-terrain cranes with multi-axles have several steering modes for various working purposes. Since steering angles at the other axles except the first wheel are controlled by using the information of steering angle at the first wheel, a reliable signal of the first axle's steering angle should be secured for the driving safety of cranes. For the fault detection of steering input signal, a simplified crane model-based sliding mode observer has been used. Using a sliding mode observer with an equivalent output injection signal that represents an actual fault signal, a fault signal in steering input was reconstructed. The road steering mode of the crane's steering system was used to conduct performance evaluations of a proposed algorithm, and an arbitrary fault signal was applied to the steering angle at the first wheel. Since the road steering mode has different steering strategies according to different speed intervals, performance evaluations were conducted based on the curved path scenario with various speed conditions. The design of algorithms and performance evaluations were conducted on Matlab/Simulink environment, and evaluation results reveal that the proposed algorithm is capable of detecting and reconstructing a fault signal reasonably well.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.26-32
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• 2020

In modern society, the energy-saving problem of industrial vehicles is economically and environmentally critical. Energy savings using the potential energy of forklifts are one of the viable solutions to resolving this problem. The basic concept of this study is to operate the hydraulic motor and recharge the battery using the flow rate from the cylinder when loading heavy objects and lowering the fork. To save energy, the torque and rotational speed of the generator should be optimized according to the load and descent speed to increase efficiency. To this end, we propose a system that optimizes energy saving efficiency by controlling the swashplate angle of the variable hydraulic motor through the GA(Genetic-Algorithm). The results were verified by building and comparing fixed motor models and variable motor models using the AMEsim. The results of the study show that the proposed optimized swashplate angle increases the energy saving efficiency by approximately 6%-8%, depending on the working conditions.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.141-151
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• 2020

The aim of this study was to analyze the safety factor of range-shift gear pairs on multi-purpose agricultural implement machinery for an optimal design of a transmission system. Gear-strengths such as bending and contact stress and safety factors were analyzed under three load conditions: an equivalent engine torque at plow tillage, a rated engine torque, and the maximum engine torque. Root and contact safety factor were calculated to be 3.88, 5.14, 2.24, 2.11, 2.21, 0.99 and 0.78, 0.94, 0.65, 0.68, 0.84, 0.85, respectively, under equivalent engine torque condition at the plow tillage. The root and contact safety factor were calculated to be 1.91, 2.53, 1.10, 1.04, 1.07, 0.48 and 0.55, 0.66, 0.46, 0.48, 0.59, 0.59, respectively, under rated engine torque condition. The root and contact safety factor were calculated to be 1.60, 2.11, 0.92, 0.87, 0.90, 0.40 and 0.51, 0.61, 0.42, 0.44, 0.54, 0.54, respectively, under the maximum engine torque condition. The multi-purpose agricultural implement machinery could be conducted under plow tillage operation. However, gear specifications for tooth surface need modification because the gear surface would be broken at all driving conditions as safety factors are lower than 1.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.15-23
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• 2023

In this study, two-dimensional location of crops for auto weeding was detected using deep learning. To construct a dataset for soybean detection, an image-capturing system was developed using a mono camera and single-board computer and the system was mounted on a weeding robot to collect soybean images. A dataset was constructed by extracting RoI (region of interest) from the raw image and each sample was labeled with soybean and the background for classification learning. The deep learning model consisted of four convolutional layers and was trained with a weakly supervised learning method that can provide object localization only using image-level labeling. Localization of the soybean area can be visualized via CAM and the two-dimensional position of the soybean was estimated by clustering the pixels associated with the soybean area and transforming the pixel coordinates to world coordinates. The actual position, which is determined manually as pixel coordinates in the image was evaluated and performances were 6.6(X-axis), 5.1(Y-axis) and 1.2(X-axis), 2.2(Y-axis) for MSE and RMSE about world coordinates, respectively. From the results, we confirmed that the center position of the soybean area derived through deep learning was sufficient for use in automatic weeding systems.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.23-31
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the PTO severeness for an agricultural tractor during disk plow and rotary tillage. The PTO load measurement system was constructed with data acquisition and a PTO torquemeter. Field experiments were conducted at a combination of traveling speed (L3 Low, L3 High) and PTO speed (P1, P2). The load spectrum was generated using the rain-flow counting method, and the SWT method was used to consider the range and mean of the PTO load. The damage sum was calculated by applying a modified miner rule, which is a cumulative damage law. The relative severeness was expressed as the ratio of the lowest damage sum. Relative severeness was higher with the lower PTO gear stage, and higher driving gear stage and it was approximately 40-102 times higher for rotary tillage than disk plow tillage in the same gear stages. The relative severeness was 1010.12 in the rotary tillage under L3 High P1 based on the disk plow tillage under L3 Low P2.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.83-89
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• 2000

In hydraulic control system turbine and gear motor type flowmeters are widely used to measure the flow rate under steady flow conditions. With the recent growth of interest in the measurement of instantaneous values of unsteady flow rate the test of the transient response of these flowmeters are in some significance. however an unsteady flow rate mea-surment and its calibration method with a fast response and a high accuracy have not beendeveloped. In this research particularly the dynamic characteristics of turbine and gear motor type flowmeters are investigated experimentally and simple mathematical models are proposed. The measured flow rate waveforms are compared with those by remote instan-taneous flow rate measurement method(RIFM) which has been developed by author and used for calibration As the result of frequency response test gain and phase between the measured flow rate waveforms by turbine type flowmeter and those estimated by RIFM are in good agreement up to 70Hz For the gear motor type flowmeter th simulated results by a math-ematical model proposed here agree well with the experiment nearly up to 100Hz. Also it if sound that the pressure drop across the flowmeter is increased in proportion to the frequency of the flow rate variation in a high frequency region of more than 100Hz. It can be explained that the dealy of gear motor type flowmeter in high frequency regionis mainly attributed to a first order delay consisting of the inertia of gears and internal leakage of the gear motor.