The performance of animal drawn mouldboard ploughs

Abstract

The geometry of four ploughs was characterised by taking various angular and linear measurements of the salient features of the plough body based on the method described by Boer (1966). Two of the ploughs were Kenyan manufactured, (Bukura Mk. II and victory plough) while the other two ploughs were manufactured by a company in Holland, (Rumptstad: winding and cylindrical bottoms). The specific resistances in sand of the four ploughs were evaluated as a measure of plough performance under three different soil conditions (blocks). The performance of these ploughs was evaluated between the speed range: 0.49 m/s to 1.04 m/s this is the speed that draught animals would be expected to operate at. The soil condition was characterised with respect to the following parameters: soil bulk density, soil moisture content, adhesion, coefficient of soil-metal friction, cohesion, internal angle of friction and the soil particle size distribution. The performance of the ploughs was modeled using the technique attributed to Goryachkin (1927). The average modeling results from the three blocks compared well with the average results obtained experimentally ..