Simulation and verification on seeding performance of nest hole wheel seed-metering device based on EDEM

Objective To study the influence of different types of hole structures on the seeds interference intensity and seeding performance of nest hole wheel metering device for rapeseeds.

Method The EDEM software was used to simulate the nest hole wheel with three different types of hole structures. Tests were also done to verify the simulation results.

Result Seeds interference intensity was affected by the hole structures evidently, and higher seeds interference intensity led to better seed-filling performance. In aspect of qualified rate, the 30° chamfering nest hole wheel (86.6% -95.8%) which had the largest seeds interference intensity performed much better than the nest hole wheel without chamfering (67.5% -90.6%) and the 1.25 mm rounded nest hole wheel (79.2% -93.5%) at 10-50 r·min^-1 rotational speed.For different wheels at the same rotational speed, higher seeds interference intensity caused lower miss-seeding rate. The space of the type hole had a different size in each chamfering, and bigger space of the type hole caused higher miss-seeding rate and variable coefficient.

Conclusion The main factor affecting seeding performance of each wheel is rotational speed. Since the redundant-seeding rate is low, the qualified rate is mainly affected by the miss-seeding rate. The fluctuation trends and the relationship among data are consistent in both simulation and test results, which proves the feasibility of the numerical simulation method based on EDEM.