Comparative analysis of the field performances of a reversible animal-drawn prototype and conventional mouldboard ploughs pulled by a single donkey

Abstract

The performance of two conventional animal-drawn mouldboard ploughs and a reversible prototype mouldboard plough were studied under field conditions in Kenya on previously ploughed and harrowed clay nitisol. The two mouldboard ploughs were a Victory plough, manufactured in the United Kingdom, and a cylindrical mouldboard plough manufactured by the Rumptstad factory of The Netherlands. The reversible prototype wooden mouldboard plough was developed at the Department of Agricultural Engineering of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences as a mouldboard type, modernized version of the ard type plough.

Simultaneous and dynamic measurement of forces, moments, ground speed and tillage depth were made. The results of the comparison between the three ploughs showed that both the horizontal and vertical components of forces resulting from the reversible plough were about 50 and 65% of the forces resulting from the Rumptstad and the Victory ploughs, respectively.

In the case of the reversible plough, the effect of a tail angle on horizontal and vertical forces was investigated. The results of field tests confirmed the laboratory results in that the form of graphs and equations describing the relationship between the forces and tail angle were similar to those obtained during the laboratory tests.

A single donkey was used to draw the implements throughout the experiment. It pulled about 25% of its body weight at an average speed of 0.8 m s−1 and worked for 9 h per day.