Modified Design of a Precision Planter For a Robotic Assistant Farmer

4-2- Planter parts stress analysis using ANSYS Workbench 
The parts in Figure 4-1 that are marked in green, are the ones that stress analysis is 
performed on them. These parts are all separately modeled in Solid-Works and are imported into 
ANSYS Workbench for stress analysis. 
The steps from the point that they imported into ANSYS Workbench are presented for 
each of them. For all the parts presented below, first the analysis is performed using a simple 
mesh. This preliminary analysis helps to verify where the maximum stress happens. Then for 
further analysis more efficient meshing can be used, with finer mesh at stress concentration 
areas. 
Figure 4- 1- Developed planer (parts in green are the ones that stress analysis is 
performed on them) 
4-2-1- Depth control link 

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Depth control link is the part that is used to set the depth of the cut in the soil. It is a 
simple flat part that is hinged on the disc holder in the middle point (point A in Figure 4-3); one 
end of this part is attached to the gauge wheel and the other end is pinned to the disc holder 
(point B in Figure 4-2). The hole at the end of the link that is not marked with any letters in 
Figure 4-3, is the point that a handle is bolted on. The user can remove the pin in point B and use 
the handle to change the depth of the cut by moving the gauge wheel up or down, when rotating 
the depth control link about its hinge-point A.
Meshing: Meshing is done using brick (hexahedral) elements. Face sizing is used to set 
element sizes to 5 mm each. The meshing is shown in figure 4-2. In this figure, it can be seen 
that the element size is set to 5 mm. The number of nodes with this meshing size is 6025. 
Figure 4- 2- Meshing of the Depth control link 

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