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Research Paper

Numerical analysis and laboratory testing of seed spacing

uniformity performance for vacuum-cylinder precision seeder

Zhao Zhan a,b,*, Li Yaoming a, Chen Jin b, Xu Lizhang a

a
Key Laboratory of Modern Agricultural Equipment and Technology, Ministry of Education & Jiangsu Province, Jiangsu University,
Zhenjiang Jiangsu 212013, China
b
School of Mechanical Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang Jiangsu 212013, China

article info
The performance of a vacuum-cylinder seeder for the precision sowing of rape seeds was
Article history: investigated. For releasing seeds from nozzles smoothly, a positive differential pressure
Received 23 November 2009 was applied to the seed. The forces acting on the seeds in free flight were calculated using
Received in revised form the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software Fluent. Using the differential equation for
23 February 2010 seed motion, seeds falling trajectories using different working parameters were numeri-
Accepted 27 February 2010 cally determined.
A high-speed camera system mounted on a laboratory seeder test-rig was used to record
the motion of seeds. A mean shift algorithm for tracking seeds was used. The horizontal
displacement x and the fall time tf of seeds predicted by the numerical analysis and
measured by the high-speed camera system were compared. The results indicated that the
relative errors of x and tf were < 5.5% and 6.5%, respectively, indicating good agreement.
Based on the analysis of seeds falling trajectories, it was found that the variations of
positive differential pressure Dp and release angle q had significant effects on seeding
uniformity. In order to analyse their effects on horizontal displacement, a coefficient of
positive differential pressure variation cp and coefficient of sowing angle variation cq were
proposed and their values calculated. Calculations indicated that the optimum levels for Dp
and q for the precision seeding of rape seeds were in the range of 1e2 kPa and from
10 to
0 , respectively. Experiments were carried out on the vacuum-cylinder precision seeder
test-rig and the results showed that the average seed spacing interval error reached the
minimum at Dp ¼ 1.5 kPa and q ¼
5 and that the error increased almost linearly with
increasing of cylinder rotational speed.
ª 2010 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction thrust of agricultural engineering research for many years.

China is the largest producer of oilseed rape in the world with
an estimated annual production of 12 million tonnes from 7
million ha, which accounts for about 35% of total world rape
seed production. Rape seed precision sowing has been a major
Among precision seeders, those using vacuum-cylinders are
widely used because they have the following advantages over
mechanical seeders; better working quality, more precise seed
rates with lower rate of seed damage, better control
and adjustment, and a broader spectrum of applicability. An

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ86 (0)511 88797338.

E-mail address: zhaozhan@ujs.edu.cn (Z. Zhan).
1537-5110/$ e see front matter ª 2010 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.biosystemseng.2010.02.012
 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 0 6 ( 2 0 1 0 ) 3 4 4 e3 5 1
Nomenclature

2
a seed acceleration, m s
g gravitational acceleration, m s
2
F air-jet impact force, N
Fz axial force, N
Fr radial force, N
m mass of a single seed, kg
M number of nozzles on the cylinder
N total number of seeds measured
tf fall time, s
v0 sticky belt velocity, m s
1
important criterion in evaluating seed drill performance is seed
spacing uniformity since a uniform distribution of seeds can
provide maximum space for each plant reducing intra-specific
competition and increasing yields. Uniform spacing also
results in uniform root size which in turn reduces harvest loss.
The objective of this study was to optimise the seed
spacing uniformity of the oilseed rape precision seeder and to
use the results to derive recommendations for design modi-
fications, e.g. in positive differential pressure and sowing
angle. To understand the reasons for reduced accuracy,
a differential equation describing seed sowing motion was
established, and the trajectories of falling seeds numerical
calculated. Effects of working parameters on the seeds falling
trajectories were verified by using a high-speed camera
system and object tracking technology.
2. Literature review
In recent years many studies have been conducted into the
performance of precision seeders. These, mostly experi-
mental, studies have revealed information on how the seeders
perform in laboratory or field.
To estimate the optimum vacuum pressure of a precision
vacuum seeder a mathematical model was developed by
Karayel et al. (2004) using the physical properties of seeds,
such as one thousand seed kernel mass, projected area,
sphericity and kernel density. The model satisfactorily
described the required vacuum pressure of the precision
vacuum seeder with the chi-square of 2.51  10
3, root mean
square error of 2.74  10
2, and modelling efficiency of 0.99.
The best performance values of a precision seeder for maize,
cotton, soya bean, watermelon, melon, cucumber, sugar beet
and onion seeds were predicted by the model.
Singh et al. (2005) investigated the effect of operational
speed of the disc, vacuum pressure and shape of the entry of
seed hole and evaluated the mean seed spacing, precision in
spacing (coefficient of variation), miss index, multiple index,
and highest quality of feed index under laboratory and field
conditions. They found that the appropriate seed hole diam-
eter for cotton seeds was 2.5 mm and the optimal entry cone
angle of planter disc was 120 . The results indicated that the
metering system with a speed of 0.42 m s
1, and a vacuum
pressure of 2 kPa produced the best performance with
a quality of feed index of 94.7% and a coefficient of variation in
spacing of 8.6%.
345
x horizontal displacement, m
x0 nominal seed spacing interval, m
xi measured seed spacing interval, m
z vertical displacement, m
Dp positive differential pressure, kPa
dx average seed spacing interval error, m
q release angle, 
cp coefficient of positive differential pressure
variation, m/pa
cq coefficient of sowing angle variation, m 
1
u cylinder rotational speed, rpm
Arzu and Adnan (2007) investigated the operating variables
of a vacuum precision seeder, including the vacuum applied
to the seed plate, the diameter of seed holes and the periph-
eral speed of the seed plate. They optimised seed spacing
uniformity performance using response surface methodology.
The data obtained in the laboratory was divided into three
different groups in order to obtain values of the multiple
index, quality of feed index, and miss index. The optimum
levels of vacuum pressure and the diameter of holes for the
precision seeding of cotton seeds were found to be around
5.5 kPa and 3 mm, respectively.
Özmerzi et al. (2002) examined the effects of different
depths of sowing maize on precision sowing uniformity of
precision vacuum seeder. Field tests showed that a nominal
sowing depth of 60 mm was optimum in terms of sowing
depth uniformity and emergence rate index. Panning et al.
(2000) evaluated five planter configurations for seed spacing
uniformity at three operating speeds using a seed location
method in the field and a laboratory method involving an
opto-electronic sensor system. Kocher et al. (1998) and Lan
et al. (1999) developed an opto-electronic seed spacing
measurement system that measured time intervals between
the seeds, and detected front and back seed drop location
events to determine the seed spacing uniformity of a planter
in the laboratory. Karayel et al. (2006) used a high-speed
camera system to evaluate seed spacing uniformity and
velocity of fall of seeds. The performance of the high-speed
camera system, in terms of seed spacing evaluation was
compared with a sticky belt test stand, which was used as
a reference. In all the tests, with the wheat and soybean seeds,
the high-speed camera system did not miss any seed.
Here, the seed pickup performance of the precision seeder
used by (Li et al., 2008) was analysed. The pickup capability of
seeder was assessed using the axial pickup distance, the
radial pickup distance and the volume of effective pickup
region.
3. Materials and methods
3.1. Experimental test-rig
The schematic diagram of the vacuum precision seeder used
in our experiments is shown in Fig. 1. Using an electromag-
netic vibrator, a seed tray was vibrated at high frequency and
low amplitude, so that the seeds in the tray could be separated
346 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 0 6 ( 2 0 1 0 ) 3 4 4 e3 5 1

Fig. 1 e Schematic diagram of vacuum precision seeder.

and easily picked up. Using a partition board, the cylinder hollow shaft and the top of the greased belt was 240 mm. The
inner cavity was split into two parts which were individual speed of sticky belt v0 was adjusted to 1.5 m s
1 which corre-
connected through the hollow shaft of the cylinder which was sponds to the forward speed of seeder in field. The sticky belt
segregated using a rubber stopper to two fans one working as test-rig is shown in Fig. 2.
a vacuum pump the others as a blower. In this way, at one end To evaluate the seed spacing uniformity, the average seed
of the shaft cavity there was a vacuum and at the other spacing interval error dx was defined as
positive pressure. Under the suction of the vacuum, seed from
the vibrating tray was picked up and held in the nozzle on the 1X N
dx ¼ jxi
x0 j (1)
rotational cylinder. With the rotation of cylinder, the vacuum N i¼1
was switched to positive pressure as the nozzles reached
a (release) point around the partition board and the seeds fell 2p
x0 ¼ v0 (2)
onto the sticky belt under the forces of gravity and the positive M,u
differential pressure. Sufficient oil was required on the top where, x0 is the nominal seed spacing interval, xi is the indi-
surface of the belt to capture the seed on to the belt surface vidual (measured) spacing, M is the number of nozzles on the
with minimum rolling or bouncing. cylinder, v0 is the velocity of the sticky belt, u is the rotational
The outside diameter of cylinder was 180 mm and the speed of the cylinder (rpm), i is a subscript representing
adjustable range of vacuum and positive differential pressure individual seeds (measured), and N the total number of seeds
was from 0 to 5 kPa. The height between the axis of the measured.

Fig. 2 e Laboratory test-rig of vacuum-cylinder precision seeder.

 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 0 6 ( 2 0 1 0 ) 3 4 4 e3 5 1 347

Table 1 e Physical characteristics of rape seed.

Physical properties Mean Standard error

Length l, mm 2.03 0.107

Width w, mm 1.92 0.081
Thickness t, mm 1.77 0.073
Sphericity,a % 93.8 1.356
Thousand seed mass, g 4.55 e
ðlwtÞ1=3
a Calculated as l  100%:

Based on the earlier analysis of the suction performance of

the seeder (Li et al., 2008), a conical nozzle with a diameter of
1 mm was selected for the tests because it proved to have
a better single pickup index for oilseed rape seeds. Because
rape seed is light and the centrifugal acceleration of cylinder
was generally less than 1 m s
2, an appropriate positive
differential pressure was necessary to make the seed release
Fig. 4 e Calculation results of radial force.
from nozzle smoothly, thus improving seed spacing
uniformity.
The physical properties of the seeds are the most impor-
tant factors in determining the working parameters. In this diameter of seed and the relative position between seed and
study, the main dimensions, sphericity and one thousand nozzle. Considering the axisymmetric structure of nozzle, F
mass of rape seeds are given in Table 1. Dimensions were could be resolved into an axial force Fz and a radial force Fr.
measured from 200 samples of randomly selected rape seeds With the improvement of computing speed and accuracy,
measured using a vernier calliper with a sensitivity of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques have been
0.01 mm. The seed mass was measured by using digital widely used for decades to predict fluid flows. Here, using the
balance with a sensitivity of 0.01 g. geometry of nozzle, three-dimensional (3-D) finite volume grid
models of the seed in the air-jet field were constructed using
3.2. Mathematical model of the falling process Gambit (version 2.3, Fluent Inc., NH, USA) grid generator. The
Navier-Stokes equations were solved using the standard ke3
turbulence model taking into account the viscosity of air and
When the seed is released from nozzle, under the actions of
compressibility and were applied to calculate Fz and Fr using
gravity force and air-jet impact force, the differential equation
Fluent (version 6.3, Fluent Inc., NH, USA). The Fluent calcula-
of seed sowing motion is
tion results for Fz and Fr at positive differential pressure of
ma ¼ mg þ F (3) 1 kPa are shown in Figs. 3 and 4. It can be seen from the

where m is the mass of a single seed, a is seed acceleration, g is

the acceleration due to gravity and F is air-jet impacting force
action on the seed. The value of F mainly depends on the
positive differential pressure, the diameter of nozzle, the

Fig. 3 e Calculation results of axial force. Fig. 5 e Numerical calculation of seed falling trajectories.
348 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 0 6 ( 2 0 1 0 ) 3 4 4 e3 5 1

Fig. 7 e Effect of positive differential pressure and release

angle on cp.

Fig. 6 e Comparison of seed falling trajectories obtained

using high-speed system and numerical calculation. 3.3. Verification of the falling trajectory

To validate the falling trajectories predicted above, a CR2000

figures, that Fz is predicted to have an axisymmetric distri-
bution, whilst Fr is axi-opposite, the maximum values of Fz
and Fr were equivalent to 7.8, 6.2 mg, which greatly influenced
the seed sowing motion.
Seeds falling trajectories can be numerical calculated by
substituting the CFD calculated results of F into Eq. (1). Fig. 5
shows the results at a cylinder rotational speed u of 20 rpm,
and positive differential pressures Dp of 0, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 kPa. At
the release point, the angle between the nozzle axis and the
vertical direction is defined as the release angle q. This
corresponds to points A, B, C at
30, 0, 30 . The time interval
between tow consecutive plotted points is 0.1 s.
During the sowing process, small variations of q and Dp
are inevitable and the variation of seed falling trajectory is
one of the prime reasons causing the seed spacing unifor-
mity errors.
(Redlake Inc., AZ, USA) high-speed camera was used to record
seeds falling. In order to obtain acceptable resolution of the
seeds, a frame rate of 500 frames s
1 was chosen. With these
settings, the time between successive images was 2 ms and
the size of picture was 512  384 pixels. Using the seed colour
feature space distribution and the Epanechnikov kernel
function, a mean shift algorithm was used to track seed falling
trajectories (Zhao and Li, 2008).
In order to eliminate the effect of individual seed sizes on
falling trajectory, tracking experiments were repeated for 10
times for each parameter. At u of 20 rpm, Dp of 0.2, 0.5, 1.0,
2.0 kPa, seed mean falling trajectories obtained using the high-
speed camera system are shown in Fig. 6. A series of images

Table 2 e Relative error analysis of horizontal

displacement and fall time obtain using high-speed
system and numerical calculation.
Positive High- Numerical Relative
differential speed calculation error, %
pressure, camera
kPa system

Horizontal 0.2 26.92 25.75 4.54

displacement 0.5 22.02 21.48 2.51
x, mm 1.0 18.42 18.00 2.33
2.0 15.08 14.33 5.23

Fall time tf, s 0.2 0.143 0.1448 1.24

0.5 0.131 0.1230 6.50
1.0 0.107 0.1028 4.08
2.0 0.0858 0.0814 5.40
Fig. 8 e Effect of positive differential pressure and release
angle on cq.
 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 0 6 ( 2 0 1 0 ) 3 4 4 e3 5 1
Fig. 9 e Effect of positive differential pressure and release
angle on fall time.
from one of high-speed videos, following an individual seed is
shown in the Appendix. To compare the numerical calculation
results and experimental measurements, the relative errors of
horizontal displacement x and fall time tf are shown in Table 2.
It is clear that the mathematical model simulating the seed
falling movement could be a very useful tool.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Numerical analysis
According to the simulation results significant differences
were found between seeds falling trajectories. Their variation
influences seed uniformity error and is heavily dependent on
the value of q, Dp and the vertical falling distance z. Optimisa-
tion of q, Dp and z is necessary to improve seed spacing
uniformity. In order to analyse their relationship, a coefficient
Fig. 10 e Experimental results of dx variation with Dp and q.
349
Fig. 11 e Effect of cylinder rotational speed on dx.
of positive differential pressure variation as it effects hori-
zontal displacement cp was defined as
vxðu; z; q; DpÞ
cp ¼ (4)
vðDpÞ
where, x is the seed horizontal displacement which is a func-
tion of u, z, Dp, q.
Similarly, a coefficient of sowing angle variation effects on
horizontal displacement cq was defined as
vxðu; z; q; DpÞ
cq ¼ (5)
vq
The absolute values of cp and cq reflect the influence level of
variation of Dp and q on the seed landing position. At the same
variation in Dp and Dq, larger values of cp and cq will lead to the
larger seed spacing uniformity errors. cp and cq were calcu-
lated varying Dp from 0 to 3 kPa and q is varied from
45 to 45
and assuming that z was 240 mm and u was 20 rpm. The
results are shown in Figs. 7 and 8.
When Dp was less than 1.5 kPa, the absolute value and the
variation of cp was greater and as a result there was a greater
seed space uniformity error (Fig. 7). When Dp is greater than
1.5 kPa, the absolute value of cp almost linearly decreased with
increasing Dp, with values close to 0 for
10 > q < 0 . Fig. 8 also
shows cq monotonically increasing with increasing of Dp. At
Dp > 1.0 kPa, the minimum cq is in the q range from
10 to 0 .
So, taking the effects of cp and cq into a comprehensive
analysis, the optimal seed spacing uniformity is predicted to be
with Dp and q in the range of 1e2 kPa and from
10 to 0 ,
respectively. The effect of Dp and q on fall time tf is shown in Fig. 9.
4.2. Sticky belt test
Experimental tests were carried out with Dp and q in the
ranges of 0.5e2.5 kPa and from
30 to 30 , and u equal to
20 rpm. The results are given in Fig. 10. It can be seen that
350 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 0 6 ( 2 0 1 0 ) 3 4 4 e3 5 1
when the seeder was operated at 1.5 kPa positive differential
pressure and
5 release angle there was a minimum average
seed spacing interval error. This verified the numerical anal-
ysis results.
Switching from vacuum to positive pressure requires
a short delay dt. During this time, the rotation angle of
nozzle is linear with the u, which results in a variation of
sowing angle. Also, increasing the cylinder rotational speed
increases the seed spacing uniformity error. An almost
linear relationship was found between u and dx (Fig. 11).
5. Conclusions
This study intended to improve seed planting uniformity by
optimising the working parameters of a vacuum-cylinder
precision seeder. The mathematical model simulating the
movement of the oilseed rape seeds at their time of release
from the nozzle was developed. The falling trajectories of seeds
obtained through CFD numerical calculations were validated
using high-speed camera measurement. The uniformity of
seeds distribution was described using the average error of
seed spacing interval. The following results were obtained.
Appendix
Image sequences of seeds falling process obtained using high-speed camera.
(1) The accuracy of seed uniformity is largely influenced by
variations in Dp and q. These effects level can be described
using coefficients cp and cq.
(2) Both the numerical calculations and the rig-test results
showed that the best uniformity of seed spacing occurred
with in the range of 1 > Dp < 1.5 kPa and
10 > q < 0 for
rape seed.
(3) The rotational speed of the cylinder also affects the accu-
racy in seed spacing. The seed uniformity error tended to
increase linearly with increasing rotational speed of the
cylinder. Thus, to increase the capacity of the seeder, the
number of nozzles on the cylinder should be maximised
since this will lower the rotational speed of cylinder and
accordingly, increase the accuracy of the seed uniformity,
whilst reducing the miss index.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Research Fund for the
Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20060299004)
and Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Modern Agricultural
Equipment and Technology (NZ200703).
 b i o s y s t e m s e n g i n e e r i n g 1 0 6 ( 2 0 1 0 ) 3 4 4 e3 5 1 351

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