Particle Kinematics Analysis of Droplet Drift in Spraying Operation of Plant Protection UAV

[Objectives]The paper was to study the effect of droplet drift on spray quality of plant protection UAV.[Methods]Based on the theory of multiphase flow and the method of particle kinematics,the force and motion trajectory of droplet sprayed by plant protection UAV were theoretically analyzed and mathematically modeled.On the basis of the assumption of wind speed in the ground layer and the laminar sublayer,that is,it is assumed that the wind speed in the area of wind measurement was approximately a linear distribution,the coupling iterative solution of the equations was carried out.The influence of droplet diameter,flight height,flight speed of plant protection UAV,course angle,wind speed,wind direction,initial droplet velocity and direction of initial velocity on droplet drift were analyzed.The influence of the coupling effect of each factor on droplet drift was further discussed and the distribution of droplet drift concentration was obtained.[Results]The wind speed and direction had much influence on the drift distance of droplets,and the drift distance and the initial velocity angle show a quadratic function distribution.Under the given conditions,the drift distance was the closest when the initial velocity angle was about 20°.The droplet drift was mainly distributed scatteredly around the nozzle.[Conclusions]The study provides a reference for improving the spraying quality of plant protection UAV.

Design and Research of Efficient Adaptive Spray Plant Protection UAV

When the plant protection UAV is spraying on plants, the operator usually performs visual inspection on the vertical distance between the UAV and the plant to adjust the spray height to complete the application. Visual inspection by human eyes is easy to cause the error of spray deposition and deposition density. In order to improve the full utilization of drugs and the spraying efficiency of plant protection UAV, an efficient adaptive spray plant protection UAV was designed, and the vertical distance from the UAV to the plant was collected by ultrasonic wave. Meantime, the plant density was detected in real time, and the flight attitude of plant protection UAV and application rate of spray nozzle were automatically adjusted. The experimental results showed that the designed highly efficient adaptive spray plant protection UAV had fast response speed, precise spray location and less drug loss.

Effects of plant protection UAV-based spraying on the vertical distribution of droplet deposition on Japonica rice plants in Northeast China

In order to study the regularity of the vertical distribution of droplet deposition on rice plants during pesticide spraying operated by a low-flying multi-rotor plant protection unmanned aviation vehicle(UAV),water-sensitive spray cards were placed on the leaves at the top,in the middle,and at the bottom of rice plants to acquire data on droplet deposition.In this study,a suspension containing tricylazole and hexaconazole was used in the spraying.The water-sensitive spray cards were analyzed by the droplet deposition processing software iDAS to obtain the vertical distribution of the droplets sprayed by the plant protection UAV.The results showed that (1)significant variation was found in the coverage of the droplets in different vertical positions of the rice plants.Within the effective spray width,the best coverage of the droplets was found in the area just below the rotors,whereas the coverage of areas farther away from the rotors was poor.For the different vertical positions of the rice plants,the overall droplet coverage was 58.38%at the top,33.55%in the middle,and 11.34%at the bottom of the plants;(2)for all vertical positions,the average size of the droplets ranged between 110μm and 140μm,which was suitable for the control of plant diseases and insect pests.The highest droplet density was found at the top of the plants,and the distribution of the droplet density was similar in the middle and at the bottom of the rice plants;(3)the diffusion ratio at the top of the rice plants(0.84)was better than that in the middle(0.57)and at the bottom(0.37).The overall relative span could meet the requirements for the actual application.Except for the position in the middle of the plants,the relative span for the other positions of the plants was over 0.67,which is the standard value.This study demonstrated the distribution regularity of droplet deposition along with the vertical direction of rice plants during UAV-based spraying,which is of guiding significance for the use of UAVs in plant protection,the improvement of chemical utilization efficiency,and the reduction of pesticide and fertilizer pollution.

Correlation Analysis of Energy Consumption of Agricultural Rotorcraft

With the rapid development of unmanned aerial vehicle technology,unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)have been widely used in the field of agricultural plant protection.Compared with fuel-driven UAVs,electrically driven rotorcrafts have many advantages such as lower cost,simpler operation,good maneuverability and cleaner power,which them popular in the plant protection.However,electrical rotorcrafts still face battery problems in actual operation,which limits its working time and application.Aiming at this issue,this paper studied the influence of rotorcraft flight parameters on energy consumption through series of carefully designed flight experiments.First of all,the linear motion experiments have been designed that the rotorcraft was made to perform speed tests and acceleration test with the speed varied from 2∼9 m/s.Secondly,the turning maneuver experiments are carried out under the different circular routes,a rotorcraft was made to conduct successive steering maneuvers at a certain speed of 2 m/s.With the collected tests data,the relation of the energy consumption and the flight dynamic parameter are analyzed through correlation analysis,and the test results of different pairs of experiments have been compared.The research results of this paper would encourage the agricultural rotorcraft to make less maneuvers during operation,which can also provide practical experience and data support for subsequent optimization of flight parameters and reduction of energy consumption.

Influence of the inner tilt angle on downwash airflow field of multi-rotor UAV based on wireless wind speed acquisition system

The downwash airflow field is an important factor influencing the spraying performance of plant protection UAV,and the structural design of rotors directly affects the characteristics of the downwash airflow field.Therefore,in this study,three-dimensional models of a six-rotor UAV with various inner tilt angles were established to simulate and analyze the influence of the inner tilt angle on the downwash airflow field based on the Reynolds average NS equation,RNG k-εturbulence model,etc..On this basis,a wireless wind speed acquisition system using the TCP server was developed to carry out the test through the marked points with real-time detection.The simulation results show that,the variation of inner tilt angles of the six-rotor UAV did not cause significant difference in the time dimension of the downwash airflow field,and with the change of the inner tilt angle from 0°to 8°,the distribution of downwash airflow field tended to obliquely shrink towards the central axis direction,and the amplitude of linear attenuation of airflow speed was also increased,which the difference of attenuation amplitude was 1 m/s.Besides,under the different inner tilt angle,the airflow velocity in“lead in area”was significantly greater than that in the“lead out area”,and the difference of air velocity distribution in space would affect the uniformity of droplet deposition.Through the calibration test,the measurement accuracy error of the developed system was lower than 0.3 m/s,and the adjusted R2 of the calibration fitting equation was higher than 0.99.The test and simulation values at test points from 0.2-2.3 m below the rotors exhibit the same variation trend,and the average relative error at the height of 1.1-2.3 m below the rotors and 0.2-0.8 m near the ground was within 10%and 20%,respectively.The simulation and test results were highly reliable,which could provide basis and reference for the design and optimization of plant protection drones.