Optimization cane traction output from hopper in full-automatic sugarcane planters by using response surface modeling and analytical hierarchy process

Agriculture mechanization plays a significant economic role by increasing agriculture production and reducing cost of cultivation. There is a dire need to develop more processing machinery for value addition of agricultural produce with a reduction in time and labour. The planting operation is one of the most important tasks that sugarcane growers undertake. It should result in a plant stand at the desired density that emerges quickly and uniformly. Austoft sugarcane planter was studied and the CAD model for metering device was simulated with Catia software. Main components of this machine are hopper, metering device, and basis. Multiple regression and Response Surface Methodology (RSM) were applied to data for investigating the effect of angle and speed of sugarcane billet metering device on discharging and precision indices. The speed of metering device had more effect than angle on both performance indices. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) used to match the best operation condition for discharging billets from hopper. The angle of 80° and speed of 1 m s-1 was the best suited condition for sugarcane billet metering device with 98.64% for precision index and 4.2 billets in per second for discharging index. A consistency ratio evaluation value of 0.1 confirmed the results. Keywords: sugarcane, planters, AHP, mechanization agriculture, RSM, computer aided design (CAD)