| dc.description.abstract | Weeds are a significant impediment to paddy production. Herbicides are commonly used
to manage weeds, however they have a number of side effects owing to environmental
pollution. Existing commercial power weeding machine in the market have not met
the required precision operation in the paddy cultivation in Sri Lanka. Farmers are
discouraged to practice the row planting or row seeding which gives high yield giving
due to constrains associated with existing weeding machines. Mainly, the drum spacing
of paddy weeder is not suitable for Sri Lankan condition. Therefore, this research was
mainly focused on design and fabrication of mechanical paddy weeder to be compatible
with Sri Lankan paddy cultivation. It comprises of fingers-shaped blades mounted on two
cage wheels that were attached to a gearbox using common shaft. Shaft was driven by a 1.6
hp petrol engine. Power generated by engine was transmitted to gearbox through power
transmission shaft. Rotation of the cage wheels help for weeding and forward driven
movement of the machine at the same time. The field performance evaluation of machine
was conducted in Farm Mechanization Research Center, at Mahailuppallama. Results
indicated that theoretical field capacity, effective field capacity and field efficiency; 0.0679
ha/h, 0.057 ha/h, and 83%, respectively. Newly designed power weeder required 17.5 man
hours per hectare. Machine speed was 0.539 m/s. The average weeding efficiency of
machine and fuel consumption were obtained as 60% and 10.4 l/ha respectively. | en_US |
