Agrothermie - design and testing of a novel hydraulically-actuated, locally vibrating plough

Economic utilization of geothermal networks under agricultural surfaces needs large agricultural areas. In order to exploit the cultivated land more effectively, this paper proposes a novel locally vibrating plough system that employs a hydraulic actuator direct on the plough blade instead of the state of the art external vibration units. Starting with a description of geothermal networks under agricultural surfaces and the construction technology in details, the contribution shows different concepts, the development and test of the most promising solution for imprinting local vibrations at the cutting edge with the goal of traction force reduction. A virtual demonstrator, the test rig set-up and the control concepts are described. Both of the closed-loop simulation and experimental position control of the entire vibration system demonstrate that the novel design has impressive performance improvement. Finally, the integration of the vibration system into a prototype tool is shown and the reduction of the traction force is proven by experiments carried out with a tractor on a testing field.