Development of a Controller for Variable-rate Application of Granular Fertilizer

This study was conducted to design and fabricate a controller for variable-rate application of granular fertilizer based on physical and chemical information, to analyze the performance of the controller and characteristics of a discharger. The result of the study are summarized as follows: 1. The charge ratios of discharger by accumulation heights of fertilizer in hopper were examined, and the variations in charge ratio were $72.58{\sim}93.33%$ and $63.14{\sim}94.42%$ for the fertilizers Super 21 and Sinsedae, respectively. The charge ratio also decreased as the rotational speed of discharger increased. 2. The coefficient of variation of discharge amount by rotational speed and discharge time of discharger were in the range of $2.94{\sim}11.23%$ and $2.82{\sim}10.80%$ for the fertilizer of Super 21 and Sinsedae. Except the rotational speed of 12 rpm, the coefficient of variation for discharge amount were relatively small with 4% more or less 3. In order to evaluate the rotational speed of discharger, the control signal in the range of $0{\sim}5V$ was subdivided into the 50 steps by 0.1V. The regression equation for the rotational speed of discharger was Y=55.984X-79.174(X: input voltage, V, Y: discharger speed, RPM) and the $R^2$ was 0.99. 4. In order to evaluate the performance of the controller for variable-rate application of granular fertilizer, settling time to unit step input was examined. The settling time varied from 0.8sec to 1.4 sec.