Drainage water management impact on farm profitability

The representative farm planning model that is used for the 2005 Purdue University Top Farmer Crop Workshop base case was extended to include managed drainage activities in order to evaluate the impact of drainage management time on farm operations. The analysis considered two alternative enterprises: rotation corn soybeans with and without controlled drainage activities. The baseline solution assumed that controlled drainage has 10% higher average yields than free flowing drainage, one drainage control structure is needed each 20 acres, and all drainage management work was done on good field days. The results suggest that the baseline optimal solution was rotation corn-soybeans with controlled drainage where 1,500 acres were cultivated with corn following soybeans and 1,500 acres with soybeans following corn. Compared to the enterprise without controlled drainage, the annual returns to resources were 10% and 7.9% higher with and without EQIP subsidy respectively. Time opportunity cost for the managed drainage activities in each time period in the baseline solution was zero except for Dec. 6 Apr. 21 period when its value was $10/hour and 108.69 hours of labor were hired. This was because of the controlled drainage activities (both installation and boards removal occur in this time period) that completely utilize full-time field labor and require additional hours of part-time labor to be hired. When hiring part-time labor was not available, the optimal enterprise was rotation corn-soybeans with managed drainage on 2/3 of the farm and corn-soybeans without controlled drainage on 1/3 of the farmland for a total annual contribution margin of$675,505. Increasing labor available by one more hour would increase the profits by $281.30 (Dec 6 Apr. 21),$28.06 (Apr 22 Apr 25), $338.18 (Apr. 26 May 2),$229.48 (May 3 May 9), $9 (May 10 May 16),$28.07 (Nov. 1 Nov 14 and Nov 15-Dec 5). In the baseline scenario the yield advantage threshold for profitability of managed drainage was 2.3% and 4.5% with and without EQIP subsidy respectively.Farm Management,

SPATIOTEMPORAL MODELING OF AGRICULTURAL YIELD MONITOR DATA1

This paper shows that spatial panel data models can be successfully applied to an econometric analysis of farm-scale precision agriculture data. The application focuses on the estimation of the effect of controlled drainage water management equipment on corn yields. Using field-level precision agriculture data and spatial panel techniques, the yield response equation is estimated using the spatial autoregressive error random effects model with temporal heterogeneity, incorporating spatial dependence in the error term, while controlling for the topography, weather and the controlled drainage treatment. Controlling for random effects allows for the disentanglement of the effects of spatial dependence from spatial heterogeneity and omitted variables, and thus, to properly investigate the yield response. The results show that controlled drainage has a statistically significant effect on corn yields. The effect is generally positive but varies widely from year to year and field-to-field. For the two years of data controlled drainage was linked to a 2.2% increase in field average yield, but that varied from a -2.6% to a +6.5%. Evaluated at mean elevation and slope in the east part of the field, controlled drainage is associated with 10 bu/a increase and a 0.6 bu/a decrease in yields in 2005 and 2006, respectively. In the West part of the field, controlled drainage is associated with a 11 bu/a increase in 2006 and 2.81 bu/a decrease in 2005.Manufactured Housing; corn, drainage, precision agriculture, spatial panel model

Bifurcation Analysis Using Rigorous Branch and Bound Methods

For the study of nonlinear dynamic systems, it is important to locate the equilibria and bifurcations occurring within a specified computational domain. This paper proposes a new approach for solving these problems and compares it to the numerical continuation method. The new approach is based upon branch and bound and utilizes rigorous enclosure techniques to yield outer bounding sets of both the equilibrium and local bifurcation manifolds. These sets, which comprise the union of hyper-rectangles, can be made to be as tight as desired. Sufficient conditions for the existence of equilibrium and bifurcation points taking the form of algebraic inequality constraints in the state-parameter space are used to calculate their enclosures directly. The enclosures for the bifurcation sets can be computed independently of the equilibrium manifold, and are guaranteed to contain all solutions within the computational domain. A further advantage of this method is the ability to compute a near-maximally sized hyper-rectangle of high dimension centered at a fixed parameter-state point whose elements are guaranteed to exclude all bifurcation points. This hyper-rectangle, which requires a global description of the bifurcation manifold within the computational domain, cannot be obtained otherwise. A test case, based on the dynamics of a UAV subject to uncertain center of gravity location, is used to illustrate the efficacy of the method by comparing it with numerical continuation and to evaluate its computational complexity

Application of bifurcation methods for the prediction of low-speed aircraft ground performance

The design of aircraft for ground maneuvers is an essential part in satisfying the demanding requirements of the aircraft operators. Extensive analysis is done to ensure that a new civil aircraft type will adhere to these requirements, for which the nonlinear nature of the problem generally adds to the complexity of such calculations. Small perturbations in velocity, steering angle, or brake application may lead to significant differences in the final turn widths that can be achieved. Here, the U-turn maneuver is analyzed in detail, with a comparison between the two ways in which this maneuver is conducted. A comparison is also made between existing turn-width prediction methods that consist mainly of geometric methods and simulations and a proposed new method that uses dynamical systems theory. Some assumptions are made with regard to the transient behavior, for which it is shown that these assumptions are conservative when an upper bound is chosen for the transient distance. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the results from the dynamical systems analysis are sufficiently close to the results from simulations to be used as a valuable design tool. Overall, dynamical systems methods provide an order-of-magnitude increase in analysis speed and capability for the prediction of turn widths on the ground when compared with simulations. Nomenclature co = oleo damping coefficient, N s2 =m2 cz = tire vertical damping coefficient Fco = damping force in oleo due to the orifice,

Interaction of torsion and lateral bending in aircraft nose landing gear shimmy

In this paper we consider the onset of shimmy oscillations of an aircraft nose landing gear. To this end we develop and study a mathematical model with torsional and lateral bending modes that are coupled through a wheel-mounted elastic tyre. The geometric effects of a positive rake angle are fully incorporated into the resulting five-dimensional ordinary differential equation model. A bifurcation analysis in terms of the forward velocity and the vertical force on the gear reveals routes to different types of shimmy oscillations. In particular, we find regions of stable torsional and stable lateral shimmy oscillations, as well as transient quasiperiodic shimmy where both modes are excited

Numerical continuation analysis of a dual-sidestay main landing gear mechanism

A model of a three-dimensional dual-sidestay landing gear mechanism is presented and employed in an investigation of the sensitivity of the downlocking mechanism to attachment point deflections. A motivation for this study is the desire to understand the underlying nonlinear behavior, which may prevent a dual-sidestay landing gear from downlocking under certain conditions. The model formulates the mechanism as a set of steady-state constraint equations. Solutions to these equations are then continued numerically in state and parameter space, providing all state parameter dependencies within the model from a single computation. The capability of this analysis approach is demonstrated with an investigation into the effects of the aft sidestay angle on retraction actuator loads. It was found that the retraction loads are not significantly affected by the sidestay plane angle, but the landing gear’s ability to be retracted fully is impeded at certain sidestay plane angles. This result is attributed to the landing gear’s geometry, as the locklinks are placed under tension and cause the mechanism to lock. Sidestay flexibilities and attachment point deflections are then introduced to enable the downlock loads to be investigated. The investigation into the dual sidestay’s downlock sensitivity to attachment point deflections yields an underlying double-hysteresis loop, which is highly sensitive to these deflections. Attachment point deflections of a few millimeters were found to prevent the locklinks from automatically downlocking under their own weight, hence requiring some external force to downlock the landing gear. Sidestay stiffness was also found to influence the downlock loads, although not to the extent of attachment point deflection