DESIGN AND OPTIMISATION OF ROTARY TILLER BLADE FOR ORCHARDS IN HILLY MOUNTAINOUS AREAS BASED ON THE DISCRETE ELEMENT METHOD

This study investigates the excessive energy consumption of traditional furrowing cutters used in sticky, heavy soils of orchards located in hilly and mountainous regions. A novel furrowing cutter was designed, taking the wetland rotary bending cutter as a reference. The bending radius, bending angle, and alpha angle were selected as design variables. Quadratic orthogonal regression and discrete element method (DEM) simulations were employed to analyse tool–soil dynamic interactions and assess the influence of key parameters on furrowing power consumption. Response surface analysis revealed that at a bending radius of 30.02 mm, bending angle of 109.97°, and alpha angle of 51.74°, the optimised cutter reduced power consumption by 12.9%, from 0.85 kW to 0.74 kW.