Study on linear synchronous motor design for oil palm cutter

Agricultural activity could be described as the science, art and business of cultivating soil, producing crops and raising livestock (1.1). Even though agriculture activity is seen as uninteresting, low income and productivity of economic activity, but the contribution from this activity cannot be neglected especially in matters concerning food security. For example, in China, having only 7% of the world’s total cultivated farmland, could support about 20% of the world’s population’s needs (1.2). Moreover, agricultural sectors are also playing a role as a major economic contributor in several countries. In South Africa for instance, agricultural sectors provided 60% of employment opportunities and generated 27% of gross national product (GDP) in 2001 (1.3). That same year, about 80% of Nepal’s people were involved in agricultural economic activities yet contributed to about 40% of its GDP (1.4), (1.5). For Nigeria, contribution of agricultural against its GDP has been shown increment pattern from about 51 % on 1970 to about 65 % on 2010 (1.6). Even for USA, at New York State alone, agricultural contribute about USD 53,719 million to economic output with about 206,604 on employment contribution

Design Of A Linear Ocsillatory Actuator For Oil Palm Mechanical Cutter

At the early stage of their use, linear motors were particularly dedicated to transportation systems. Nowadays, linear motors are meant to replace a system using a rotating motor and a transmission to realize a linear movement. With linear motors, the performance of the system increased considerably since the mechanical limitations are removed. This leads to a better precision, a higher acceleration and a higher speed of the moving part. Therefore, direct drives with linear motors are increasingly used in industrial applications although these solutions normally lead to more investment costs. In this research, the linear motor would be applied as part of an oil palm motorized cutter system. Due to it advantages especially in term of producing linear motion the efficiency of the existing motorized cutter system is expected to improve. The existing system uses intermediate shaft and gears in order to convert rotary motion to linear motion for harvesting activity. However, the rotational transmissions become ineffective when it is used for palm trees higher than 5 meters. It is due to the fact that intermediate shaft bends as the length increases. On top of that, it will increase the overall weight of the mechanical system as the length increases. The new system of oil palm motorized cutter employs the linear oscillatory actuator (LOA) to replace the intermediate shaft and gear to produce linear motion. It eliminates the mechanical limit because there is no more intermediate shaft used in this system. The function of the intermediate shaft will be replaced by the copper wire in order to energize the LOA. The LOA is an actuator in which a mover performs a reciprocating motion in a range of stroke as a result of being driven by a current having a sinusoidal or pulse wave form. The structure of LOA has been designed using FEM software by previous researcher. The drawback of the previous model is the lack of force to perform harvesting activity. Therefore in this research, the LOA design has been optimized to achieve high thrust of LOA. The method used in this design optimization is Permeance Analysis Method (PAM). The design optimization is done by varying the size of permanent magnets and coils. In this design, it is ensured that the magnetic density saturation does not occur because, if it does, the thrust of the LOA will not increase even though the input current is increased. The constrain in this research is to develop the LOA within its limited overall weight. It is to make sure the LOA is mobile to the users. As a result, not only the high starter thrust of LOA about 200 N has been developed, but it is also light in weight which 2.0 kg and small in size which is 3.14×10-4 m3 in volume

STUDY ON LINEAR SYNCHRONOUS MOTOR DESIGN FOR OIL PALM CUTTER （オイルパームカッター用リニア同期モータ設計に関する研究）

信州大学(Shinshu university)博士（工学）ThesisFAIRUL AZHAR BIN ABDUL SHUKOR. STUDY ON LINEAR SYNCHRONOUS MOTOR DESIGN FOR OIL PALM CUTTER （オイルパームカッター用リニア同期モータ設計に関する研究）. 信州大学, 2015, 博士論文. 博士（工学）, 甲第632号, 平成27年3月20日授与.doctoral thesi

Initial progress and possible improvement of e-cutter linear actuator development

Currently, palm oil has become the most consumed vegetable oil type. This is due to an awareness of the effect Trans Fat has on human health. Therefore, increasing productiveness is a crucial factor to ensure its continued availability as a product in the marketplace. One of the processes that should be improved to increase productivity is harvesting. The Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) has put a lot of effort into developing a mechanized harvesting tool called the Cantas™. This efficient tool has been shown to increase oil palm harvesting productivity by a factor of 3. However, Cantas™ is ineffective at harvesting oil palm fruit in trees taller than 8m. Therefore, a new tool called the E-Cutter was introduced. In this paper, the development progress of specifically the E-Cutter’s linear actuator part was discussed. The previous type of linear actuator for the E-Cutter is also mentioned. Improvement in the planning and design target of the linear actuator is also addressed. The potential linear actuator structure and type is also identified

Structure optimization of a 6 slot 8 pole permanent magnet linear motor

Palm oil has become the most consumed vegetable oil. In order to ensure its sustainability, the productivity of oil palms is targeted to increase by about 3.5% each year. Mechanization is one method to improve the oil palm productivity. Most activities in the oil palm process have been mechanized, and the mechanization of the harvesting process still need to be established. Tools to this end have been introduced by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) in Malaysia with the introduction of the Cantas™, however, due to their operational limitations, the E-cutter was later introduced. In this paper, the design of the E-cutter’s actuator is discussed. The design targets of the actuator are also briefly explained. In the end, an E-cutter’s actuator with 218 N of average thrust, Fave and a total weight, W, of 1.8 kg has been designed. The performance of the E-cutter’s actuator is also compared to a commercialized linear motor to prove its high performance

Performance evaluation and comparison of switched reluctance cylindrical linear motor

Nowadays, most of the researchers have put a lot of effort in designing the permanent magnet type of linear motor. However, due to resource problem occur recently to the permanent magnet material has led to increment of the material cost. This situation made the linear motor productivity is reduced. Because of this reason, most of linear motor manufacturers are prefer to development non-permanent magnet type to ensure product competitiveness and increase cost performance. Therefore, in this research, a switched reluctance linear motor was designed. The teeth shape has been varied in order to observed the effect to it's performance. As a result, the best model of switched reluctance linear motor with optimum teeth shape has been proposed. The performance of the model also has been compared to other similar type of linear motor and the permanent magnet type of linear motor.Article日本AEM学会誌. 22(2):232-237 (2014)journal articl

Current Achievement and Future Plan for Improvement for E Cutter Development

E Cutter is a harvesting tool dedicated for oil palm fresh fruit bunch (FFB). It employed rapid chopping method and bunch harvest as it harvesting method. The E Cutter development was inspired by the usage of CantasTM which currently efficient tool for oil palm FFB harvesting. However, due to height limitation that influences the operation of CantasTM, the development of E Cutter was seen as a breakthrough to at least maintaining the performance of CantasTM in harvesting higher palm tree. Both of E Cutter and CantasTM comprise three major parts. There are energy provider part at the bottom, actuator part at the top and energy transmitter in the middle. Compared to CantasTM that totally applies mechanical system, the E Cutter is applies the electrical system especially in the actuator and energy transmitter part. However, in this paper, the progress of the E Cutter actuator development was focused. The previous achievement of the actuator and future planning for improvement will be explained. In the end part of this paper, the design target and type of future actuator will be developed for E Cutter also has been stated

Thrust Optimization of Linear Oscillatory Actuator Using Permeance Analysis Method.

This paper describes thrust optimization of linear oscillatory actuator (LOA). The objective of the optimization is to obtain the highest as possible thrust at restricted weight of LOA in order to ensure it equipped with adequate thrust and mobility features. In this research, the LOA is aim to have a starter thrust higher than 200 N while having total of weight lower than 2.0 kg. The thrust of LOA was optimized by using permeance analysis method (PAM). The thickness of the permanent magnets and the height of coils have been varied at different fixed total of radius of LOA in order to obtain the optimized structure. The optimized structure of LOA was decided by using two different methods. The first method is by evaluating the each point of the calculation output. The second method is by using generic algorithm. Both output of these method giving a different result in term of LOA PM's thickness however having similar thrust characteristics. The FEM and measurement results were used to verify the PAM output. Consequently, the LOA has been designed with optimum parameters which having value of starter thrust of 245 N and the total weight is 2.0 kg

Design Of A Linear DC Motor For High Thrust Constants Characteristics

Traditionally a linear motion system consists of a rotational motor and motion translation component. However, the traditional systems inherit several drawbacks that contribute into operational limitation. Currently, use of a linear motor is seen as an alternative to produce direct linear motion without use any motion translation. Linear DC Motor (LDM) is one type of linear motor. Previously, a LDM has been developed to be use in a linear displacement system. Based on experimental result, it could achieve a desired displacement with fast settling time and low overshoot. However, in order to improve the system performance especially in term of time response, a new LDM need to be designed. In this paper, a LDM for similar application was designed. The shape of the LDM has been change from a rectangular to quarter circle due to changes in shape of permanent magnet. Furthermore, material of the permanent magnet also has been changed from ferrite to NdFeB to increase the magnetic flux density in air gap. Based on the designed, the LDM has produce about 3.1 N/A and 35.12 ms in term of thrust constant, kf and mechanical time constant, Tm respectively. In comparison with previous LDM, it only produced about 1.6 N/A and 111.72 ms in term of thrust constant, kf and mechanical time constant, Tm respectively