Vibration characteristic of weight saving boom sprayer by using CFRP

Abstract

Boom sprayers which spread agricultural chemicals to the wide area are used for the vast farmland. In addition to the fact that the scale of agriculture in Hokkaido is larger than other regions, hilly areas are often used. This causes vibrational excitations of the long booms of sprayer system, and boom vibrations invoke nonuniform distributions of agricultural chemicals. The authors have proposed an effective vibration isolation system with balancing weights in the past tsudy but these weights results in vast increase of the proposed system. In this study, the topology optimization technique is applied to the first boom and carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) are employed for the second boom. The weight of the boom is successfully reduced from optimization and material alternation with keeping the vibration characteristics similar with the existing structure.