ASABE Technical Library - Abstract

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PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT AND MODEL DEVELOPMENT OF A VARIABLE–RATE, SPINNER–DISC FERTILIZER APPLICATOR

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  Transactions of the ASAE. 44(5): 1071–1081. (doi: 10.13031/2013.6429) @2001
Authors:   J. P. Fulton, S. A. Shearer, G. Chabra, S. F. Higgins
Keywords:   Precision agriculture, Variable–rate technology, Modeling

The popularity of spinner spreaders for application of granular fertilizers and agricultural lime, along with increased interests in variablerate technology (VRT), has raised concern about application accuracy and distribution of these spreaders. This investigation was undertaken to assess the application distribution of a VRT spinner fertilizer spreader. Application distribution was assessed using a matrix of collection pans and following test procedures outlined in ASAE Standard S341.2. Uniform and variablerate tests were performed to characterize the application variability of the spreader and to test the effect of rate changes via GPS control. Uniform and variablerate application models were developed from the collected data. A sigmoidal function was used to describe increasing application rate changes, while a linear function described decreasing rate changes. Average transverse distribution patterns were used to model both high and low application rates. The resulting models were then compared to the actual distributions. The model was found to do a good job of characterizing uniform and variablerate application patterns and therefore may be suitable for simulating variablerate application errors.

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