Soil & Tillage Research 92 (2007) 264–268

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Short communication
Measurement of penetration force using a Hall-current-sensor
Y. Sun a, J. Lin a, D. Ma a, Q. Zeng a,*, P. Schulze Lammers b
a
Research Center for Precision Farming, China Agricultural University, Beijing, PR China
b
Department of Agricultural Engineering, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany
Received 27 May 2005; received in revised form 8 December 2005; accepted 5 January 2006

Abstract
Due to the evident influence of the penetration velocity on the measurement of cone index (CI), diverse motor-operated
penetrometers have been designed to keep the velocity with a constant. In this paper, an attractive method to determine the
penetration force for a motor-operated penetrometer was presented. Unlike other conventional methods employing various force
sensors, this method used a Hall-current-sensor to dynamically measure the operating current of a permanent magnet dc-motor. For
the proposed method, both a theoretical analysis related the operating current of the dc-motor to the penetration force and the
measurement principle of the Hall-current-sensor were addressed. A soil column with three-layer water contents was used in the
laboratory test. The experimental results confirm that the operating current of the dc-motor was a determinate indictor for estimating
the penetration force.
Published by Elsevier B.V.

Keywords: Penetration force; Hall-current-sensor; Penetrometer; Measurement

1. Introduction soil water content, soil texture and penetration velocity,

Penetrometers have been widely studied and used for
different applications, such as to evaluate the traffic-
ability and the soil resistance affecting plant’s root
elongation (Droogers et al., 1996; Perumpral, 1987;
Williams et al., 2005; Zhou et al., 2005). A simple
penetrometer is a penetration rod having a conical tip
with a force sensor, which may be a strain-gauge or
piezoelectric load cell (Lower, 1986; Rawitz and
Margolin, 1991; Young et al., 2000; Sun et al.,
2004). Cone index (CI), one of efficient measures for
estimating the penetration force, was defined as the
penetration resistance divided by cone cross-sectional
area. Besides soil compaction, many factors, such as
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 10 82380724/82380725;
fax: +86 10 62736827.
E-mail addresses: Qingmeng_zeng@yahoo.com,
fjjoljh@yeah.net (Q. Zeng).
may also have impact on CI during measurement (Ayers
and Perumpral, 1982; Morrison and Bartek, 1987;
Busscher et al., 1997; Topp et al., 2003; Hummel et al.,
2004). If the penetration velocity changes with a
positive acceleration, then the soil resistive force will
increase or vice verse (Herrick and Jones, 2002). Thus, a
constant velocity recommended by the ASAE Standard
(1998) is 30 mm s1. Since it is difficult to achieve a
constant penetration rate by hand-pushed penetrometer,
various motor-operated penetrometers have been
designed to meet the ASAE Standard (Lower, 1986;
Topp et al., 2003). On the other hand, compared with the
hand-pushed penetrometer, the motor-operated penet-
rometer is relatively complicated and expensive
because of the motor together with its control circuit
and other accessory parts. In order to reduce the cost of
the motor-operated penetrometer, a new method was
developed to determine CI. This method used a Hall-
current-sensor rather than a force sensor to measure the
dynamic current of the dc-motor considering the cost of

0167-1987/$ – see front matter. Published by Elsevier B.V.

doi:10.1016/j.still.2006.01.002
 Y. Sun et al. / Soil & Tillage Research 92 (2007) 264–268
Hall-current-sensor significantly lower than that of a
precise force sensor. The primary objectives of this
study are to (i) present a theoretical analysis of the
newly developed method; (ii) perform a laboratory test
for validating the feasibility of the proposed method.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Motor-operated penetrometer
Fig. 1 shows the diagram of the penetrometer used
for this study, which consisted of a permanent magnet
dc-motor (M63x60/I, Kählig Antriebstechnik GmbH,
Germany), a precise force sensor (HBM-C9B/500N,
Hottinger-Baldwin-Messtechnik, Germany) together
with an associated amplifier, a depth transducer
(manufactured own), a control box including a data
acquisition board, an ASAE-standard penetration rod,
and a rack and rigging parts. The nominal voltage and
maximal output-power of the dc-motor was 12 V and
99 W, respectively. The force sensor was a strain-gauge
load cell and the output sensitivity of the associated
amplifier was 0.01 V N1. The depth transducer (a
potentiometer with 10-turn, 10 kV and 0.25%
linearity) was mounted on the same axis of the dc-
motor. As the penetration rod moved down and up, the
potentiometer was rotated by a rack and pinion
adjustment so that the output of the depth transducer
linearly varied with 0.01 V mm1. Three analogue
signals from the force sensor, the Hall-current-sensor
and the depth transducer were fed to their designated
channels in the data acquisition board, which was
Fig. 1. Diagram of the motor-operated penetrometer.
265
programmed with LabVIEW6.1. The penetration
velocity was 30 mm s1 and the maximum vertical
movement was 500 mm.
2.2. Relationship between penetration force and
operating current
The relationship between the penetration force and
the operating current can be quantified based on the
principle of the energy transformation between electric
and mechanism. For a permanent magnet dc-motor:
M ¼ KIa (1)
where M (Nm) is the output torque of the dc-motor, Ia
(A) the operating current and K (Nm/A) is torque
constant. Moreover, for the motor-operated penetrom-
eter:
MV ¼ KIa V ¼ ð fP þ fM  mgÞv (2)
where V (rad/s) is the angular speed of the dc-motor, f P
(N) the penetration force, f M (N) the total mechanical-
friction arisen from the rack versus pinion and the
additional bearing system, m (kg) the mass of the total
moving parts of the penetrometer and v (m s1) is the
penetration velocity. Taking the rotating radius r = v/V
into Eq. (2), the relationship between the operating
current and the penetration force can be expressed as
r
Ia ¼ ð fP þ fM  mgÞ (3)
K
For this motor-operated penetrometer, r = 9.5 mm
and K = 3.1 Nm A1 (Kählig Antriebstechnik GmbH
and Germany, 2005). According to the above analysis,
I0, a specific value of the operating current resulting
from the term of ( f M  mg), can be measured since
f P = 0 before the tip of the penetration rod reaches the
surface of soil.
r
I0 ¼ ð fM  mgÞ (4)
K
Defining I = Ia  I0 as a corrected measure of the
operating current, then:
K
fP ¼ I (5)
r
2.3. Measurement of operating current
Fig. 2 presents a principle layout for measuring the
operating current of the dc-motor. Ia, from the dc power
266 Y. Sun et al. / Soil & Tillage Research 92 (2007) 264–268
Fig. 2. Measurement principle of the operating current of the dc-
motor.
supply, passes through the Hall-current-sensor and the
dc-motor. A Hall-element is made from a thin sheet of
conductive material with output connections perpendi-
cular to the direction of current flow. When subjected to
a magnetic field, the Hall-element responses with an
output voltage proportional to the magnetic field
strength. In this study, a Hall-current-sensor with an
accuracy of 1% (CS010G, Nanjing Chief-union
Sensor M&C Co., Nanjing, China) was used, whose
operating voltage (Vcc) was 5 V and the maximal
measurement current was 10 A within a temperature
range from 10 to +70 8C. Comparing sensor’s costs,
this Hall-current-sensor (less than US$ 10) was much
cheaper than the used force sensor (approximate US$
500). Vout in Fig. 2 denotes the output voltage of the
Hall-current-sensor. The relationship between Ia and
Vout, provided by the manufacturer, was determined as
 
Vcc
Ia ¼ u Vout  (6)
2
where u (A V1), the transfer coefficient of the Hall-
sensor, is 5 (Chief-Union Sensor M&C Co., Ltd., 2005).
2.4. Test procedures
The system was tested with three steps, including (i)
to calibrate the force sensor with a series of standard
forces ranging from 0 to 500 N; (ii) to determine the
Fig. 3. Soil column packed with three-layer water contents.
Fig. 4. Calibration results of the force sensor.
value of I0 defined as in Eq. (4); (iii) to validate the
analysis of Eq. (5). For the second step, 6 tests were
repeated to measure I0 under f P = 0. For the third step,
soil columns shown in Fig. 3 (diameter 300 mm, height
450 mm) were packed with three layers of GWC
(gravimetric water content). A thin plastic film was used
to separate layers so that no moisture exchanged across
each boundary. The bulk density of the soil columns was
1.5 g cm3 and the textural compositions of the tested
samples were sand 11%, silt 55% and clay 34%. The
sampling rate of the data acquisition board was chosen
at 10 Hz so that approximate 50 data were collected
along with each layer. To statistically verify Eq. (5),
16 penetrating processes were replicated for regres-
sion analysis. Besides, a test for comparing the
theoretical and statistical results was conducted.
3. Results and discussions
Fig. 4 shows the calibration results of the force
sensor. It is evident that there exists an exact linearity
between the output of the force senor and the exerted
force ranging from 0 to 500 N. Thus, the output of the
force sensor could be served as the reference signals to
verify the relationship between the operating current of
the dc-motor and the penetration force. Fig. 5 gives
the experiment results of I0 along with the depths.
Fig. 5. Test results of the Hall-current-sensor under fP = 0.
 Y. Sun et al. / Soil & Tillage Research 92 (2007) 264–268
Fig. 6. Regression analysis between the force and Hall-current-sen-
sor.
Obviously, there was a transient process of the dc-motor
at the initial process. Since the analysis of Eq. (4) did not
include the transient process of I0, the values of I0 at the
depth of 0–10 mm should be excluded. In this test, the
statistical mean of I0 was 1142 mA corresponding to a
S.D.E. (standard deviation error) of 9 mA. Fig. 6
indicates the test results measured from the force sensor
and the Hall-current-sensor during the16 penetrating
processes. For the purpose of verifying the theoretical
results with the measured data, the analytical solution of
Eq. (5) is also shown in Fig. 6. In particular, by statistical
analysis, a linear regression equation (slope 0.281,
interception 24.35) with R2 = 0.993 demonstrated the
correlation between the measured force and the measured
data from Hall-current-sensor. Although the slope of the
archived regression equation was somewhat lower than
that of Eq. (5) and the interception of the regression
equation was not exactly equal to zero, the test results
significantly approximated to the theoretical analysis of
Eq. (5). Apart from above discussions, Fig. 7 presents a
comparison among the penetration resistance directly
measured by the force sensor, the data from the measured
operating current and then converted with Eq. (5), or the
regression equation in Fig. 6. After statistical calculation,
we found S.D.E. = 9.49 N between the measured force
versus the results of Eq. (5) and S.D.E. = 3.97 N between
Fig. 7. Comparison of data from force senor and Hall-current-sensor
converted with Eq. (5) or the regression in Fig. 6, respectively.
267
the measured force versus the results of the regression
equation. As a statistical consequence, the results from
the measured operating current and then corrected with
the regression equation seemed relatively closer to that
from the directly measured force.
4. Conclusions
A practical method using a Hall-current-sensor for a
motor-operated penetrometer to determine soil penetra-
tion force was developed. The theoretical analysis
demonstrated a linear relationship between the operating
current and the penetration force when a permanent
magnet dc-motor was used. The experiment results
agreed to that of analytical analysis with R2 = 0.993.
Therefore, the operating current of the dc-motor can act
as a determinate indictor to estimate the penetration force
for the motor-operated penetrometer. Secondly, it is
promising to replace the force sensor with the proposed
Hall-current-senor due to the fact that the cost of the Hall-
current-sensor is considerably cheaper than that of the
force sensor. In addition, it may simplify the mechanical
structure of the motor-operated penetrometer because the
Hall-current-sensor, as an electronic device, needs not to
consider any mechanical installation.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the financial support of (i) the
National Nature Science Foundation of China under
project No. 30370823 and (ii) the Educational Ministry
of China project No. (20030019012). We also acknowl-
edge the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
and the China Scholarship Council (CSC) for promoting
our cooperation research.
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