Design and Simulation of a Passive Vertical Suspension System for Spray Boom Structure

The most usual way of using chemical method to protect crop against weed, insects, and fungi is spraying the mixture of chemicals and water onto crop through the nozzles. Sprayers usually moved on the field by tractor, and tractor induced unwanted vibration to sprayer because of uneven soil or terrain. This oscillation leads to over-doses and under-doses of chemical sprayed on the field. For this reason, many commercial and some theoretical suspension were made to reduce undesirable vibration. Therefore, in this study a finite element based model was established to represent the dynamic behavior of spray boom structure with 8m width. The first tenth natural frequencies were obtained between 9.25 Hz to 1,182.5 Hz. Also, a passive vertical suspension was designed to remove unwanted vibration with 0.5 vibration transmissibility. Finally, the suspension system was simulated to be as certain of its efficiency. The results of simulation have good agreement to the proposed aim.