Study of Power Requirements of the Combined Moldboard Plow at Different Forward Speeds

  The experiments were carried out in one of the agricultural fields of the College of Agriculture, University of Basrah, using a split-plot design with three replications to study the influences of single factors and their interactions on the performance of the developed moldboard plow. The parameters studied involved: moldboard type (M1: conventional moldboard, M2: finned moldboard), rigid harrow types (H0: moldboard plow without rigid harrow, H1: moldboard plow with one row of rigid harrow, H2: moldboard plow with two rigid harrows) and forward speed (S1: 1.5 km h-1, S2: 2.5 km h-1, S3: 3.5 km h-1). The results showed a significant effect of individual factors on the performance variables. The moldboard with fins (M2) led to an increase in draft force (%p<0.05) compared to the conventional moldboard (M1) by 8.36%.  H2 increased the draft force, reaching 17.60 kN compared to H0 by 35.18%. Forward speed had a significant effect (%p<0.05), whereas draft force increased from 16.86 kN to 14.04 kN when forward speed from 1.5 to 3.5 km h-1. The interactions were also significant (%p<0.05). The interaction treatment (M2*H2*S3) recorded the highest draft force value of 19.86 kN, while the interaction treatment (M1*H0*S1) recorded the lowest value of 10.55 kN. Furthermore, the highest slip percentage was observed with (M2*H2*S3) reaching 19.53%, while the lowest was observed with (M1H0S1) at 8.2%. In terms of fuel consumption, the combination (M2*H2*S1) recorded the highest rate at 35.37 L ha-1, while the combination (M1*H0*S3) recorded the lowest fuel consumption rate at 16.60 L ha-1.