Sowing Performance of the Seeder Drill for the 2BYG-220 Type Combined Rapeseed Planter under Vibration Conditions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The accuracy of sowing the seeds of almost all plants is one of the basic indicators and at the same time the conditions for ensuring the high quality of the growth of plant cultures (in fields, beds in growing containers, etc.) whose seeds are sown. Some plants are less sensitive to the accuracy of sowing, but in some, inaccuracies in sowing can cause a significant deterioration in the quality of the cultivated crops. It is rapeseed that belongs to the second of the mentioned groups - the inaccuracy of sowing can also cause a deterioration of the final yields of this crop. The presented article deals with the specific technical improvement of the sowing device of the combined seeding machine in the specific conditions of seeding harvested rice fields with rapeseed. The authors' effort is to remove or at least mitigate the current shortcomings of the sowing process in these conditions, related to vibrations during sowing and thus improve its quality. Since rapeseed is a crop that is of considerable importance in the agriculture of not only China, but countries all over the world, and any improvement in some part of its cultivation chain therefore has a significant global impact, I consider the factual content of the article to be current and important for potential manufacturers of rapeseed seed drills, as well as for the farmers themselves.

In Chapter 1 - Introduction, the authors describe the starting points for solving the study, on the basis of which the article was created. They thoroughly deal with issues related to the shape of the rape seed and its links to the mechanism of the seeding devices of seed drills. They analyze a number of relevant publications by renowned authors. They characterize the specifics of seeding for which they conducted research, i.e. seeding the uneven surface of harvested rice fields. At the end of this chapter, the authors present the goal of their work, namely the analysis and reduction of the influence of vibrations on the quality of rape seed sowing.

In Chapter 2 – Materials and Methods, the authors first present the results of their investigation of the vibrations of an existing seeding machine when deployed on a harvested rice field. They clearly describe the findings and the equipment they used to find them. They also compile a theoretical formula for their determination. Subsequently, they prepare a measuring mechanism, which they install on the sowing machine, and with its help, they carry out further investigations into the effects of vibration intensity on seeding accuracy. In the next part, they explain the methodical procedure used in the subsequent experimental tests of the sowing machine in different working speed regimes, and therefore also in different regimes of vibration of the sowing mechanism. The second part of chapter 2 describes the test bench and the method of its use in experimental tests. This sub-chapter is supplemented with physical formulas and illustrative images and therefore provides a comprehensible description of the research procedure used by the authors.

The most important part of the article is chapter 3 – Results. The authors analyzed the obtained data using standard statistical methods and found that one of the two vibration characteristics, i.e. amplitude, has only a very small effect on seeding quality. However, the vibration frequency is revealed as a very important vibration factor that affects the seeding quality. Again, using standard statistical methods, the authors determined the values ​​of the frequencies at which the lowest and highest qualitative influence on the quality of seed sowing occurs. The results are documented by equations of statistical dependencies and appropriate graphs, from which, among other things, it is clear that there is a significant dependence of the relationship between the vibration frequency level and the uniformity of seeding.

In Chapter 4 - Discussion, the authors reflect on the links between individual factors influencing the quality of seeding in the mechanisms tested by them. One can agree with their views. If it were possible, I would recommend supplementing this subsection by comparing the results achieved by the authors when solving the study with the results of other authors. However, I am not sure if anyone has dealt with similar details as the authors of the article. If no one has published their results yet, in my opinion, the content of ch. 4 to leave in its current form.

Chapter 5 – Conclusion provides a brief and comprehensible summary of the content of the previous parts of the article. I think that it affects everything important that is discussed in the article and therefore I have no comments on it.

References are processed in the prescribed manner and I have no comments on them.

 

In my opinion, the article meets the requirements for scientific articles. It is formally and substantively correct, and therefore I recommend it for publication, after any additions to chapter 4 Discussion (as above, but I do not insist on it at all costs).

Author Response

Dear  Reviewer 1:

Thank you for having reviewed our manuscript,  entitled “Sowing Performance of the Seeder Drill for the 2BYG-220 Type Combined” (applsci-3017370).

We appreciate you very much for your constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript.

This manuscript has been edited by Academic Editor from MDPI  Author Services, and the language certificate is attached at the end of the document.

We have already read all the comments and recommendations carefully, and tried our best to revise the manuscript accordingly. The changes made in the revised manuscript are clearly highlighted in red. Detailed replies to the comments are made as follows:

According your suggestions, we  have supplemented In Chapter 4 by comparing the results achieved by the authors when solving the study with the results of other authors.

We sincerely hope that this revised manuscript has addressed your comments and suggestions. We appreciated for your warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. In Figure 4 on page 7 increase the quality of position numbers and  position lines.

2. Increase the quality of  Figures 2, 3, 4 , 6.

3. Missing description in the method of seed metering device's.

4. Mislabeled Figure 4 on line 328 - Fig. 5

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear  Reviewer 2:

Thank you for having reviewed our manuscript,  entitled “Sowing Performance of the Seeder Drill for the 2BYG-220 Type Combined” (applsci-3017370).

We appreciate you very much for your constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript.

This manuscript has been edited by Academic Editor from MDPI  Author Services, and the language certificate is attached at the end of the document.

We have already read all the comments and recommendations carefully, and tried our best to revise the manuscript accordingly. The changes made in the revised manuscript are clearly highlighted in red. Detailed replies to these comments are made as follows:

1.  We have increased the quality of position numbers and position lines In Figure 4 .

2. We have increased  the quality of  Figures 2, 3, 4 , 6.

3.  We used the double hole-wheel seedmeter as the seed metering device, and have supplemented description in the method of seed metering device.

4. We have labeled the parts and captions in Figure 4 and Figure 5.

We sincerely hope that this revised manuscript has addressed your comments and suggestions. We appreciated for your warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The proposed paper describes the topic of 2BYG-220 and the lab-type of the automatic sower for the rapeseed; however, in the later part, we cannot recognize if the final device or some laboratory prototypes are discussed. Research on vibration control over this system and vibration analysis has been claimed; however, this topic cannot be recognized. The paper is very chaotic and has multiple claims in the abstract, and the conclusions are not supported by the body of the paper and the research conducted. A big part of the manuscript is a very basic deliberation on the fundamentals of measurements and some model formulation, which, in my opinion, makes no sense. Removing unnecessary parts will cut the paper by about 3-4 pages. Also, the fundamental outcome is that when the vibration is ‘between 0-10 Hz,” it does not affect the seeding, but the vibration in the range ‘10-24 Hz’ does make no sense as this also means a higher speed of sowing… It is evident that higher speed means lower precision, and it is not only connected to higher vibration. This does not make sense here and is not a proper research paper as the methods, outcomes, and definitions are mixed, wrong and not applicable to the proposed topics. The paper should be rejected as the authors express a lack of understanding of scientific paper methodology, such as proper method description, using only essential information referring to the current paper and the connection between the discussion, conclusions, and presented results. This reviewer is not supposed to write the paper for the authors, so only general conclusions are presented here, as the authors should withdraw the manuscript, repeat the measurements, and rethink the paper formulation.

Please see the general remarks on the particular parts of the paper:

1. Introduction - however, it makes some scope on the topic that the vibration analysis and control in the sowing equipment is necessary, starting line 42 up to 87 this is just random citation of multiple papers with one or two sentences description for each without proper storytelling and no connection with the actual paper. 

2. Section 2 - Materials and methods – starting line 125 up to line 236, the data acquisition method is described, but here we have the definitions of fundamental methods such as PSD, sampling theory, or filtering methods. It makes no sense to put it in an expert field paper as this is very well-known knowledge. This whole part should be removed and compressed to directly describe the used methods, equipment and its justification, with no explanation of PSD function…

3. Section 3 is something that I do not understand. I think it is claimed to be some model definition… it mentions some calculations in Matlab (amplitude 0 to 3 mm or torque 17,58 N*m), but we do not know what is calculated and by which method. It makes no sense to me.

4. In line 311, some discrete model simulations are mentioned. We do not know which model is used here, and it was not defined, as it is not some random sine and cosine equations mentioned before.

5. The whole discussion makes no sense and is unrelated to the previous results. The same refers to the conclusions part.

 

Additional remarks in general to the paper content:

6. I do not know what the authors mean by “sinusoidal vibrations”, but it is evident that these definitions are mixed across the paper. Did you mean harmonic signals, periodic signals, or something like that? The paper expresses a severe lack of fundamental signal processing knowledge, so the descriptions in this field are wrong.

7. The measured frequency range is, in my opinion, wrong. Finally, the 2 Hz to 200 Hz range was selected, but later, only frequencies up to 25 Hz were analyzed, while at the same time, it is claimed that those are rotational machines operating with 200-300 RPM and up to 2000 RPM. Regarding rotating machines, it is essential to track the fundamental frequencies concerning the actual rotating speed, monitor the rotating speed as it is continuously variable and use advanced methods such as order analysis or at least STFT to monitor the different load conditions and to change RPM in the system. Also, the higher harmonics of the rotation speed fundamental frequency should be tracked. There is nothing like this in the proposed paper.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The paper is written in very bad English, which makes it very difficult to read. A professional editor should correct it before any resubmission.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

The authors provided a revised version of the paper on the vibrational study of rapeseed planters. However, the quality of the manuscript improved, but there are still two significant lacks that need to be resolved prior to the paper's reconsideration: 

1. I do not see any connections from any equation in the paper. I am sure none of the simple sine or cosine functions describes the behavior of a complex machine. The authors must elaborate on the provided equations or remove them from the paper with the corresponding text.

2. The authors explained the model formulation in 2.3, but we still have no idea what kind of model it is. This is not a proper description of the scientific process, as we know nothing about the methods and models used in this research. Also, the connection with the rest of the paper is inadequately explained.

This reviewer accepts the rest of the explanations provided in the cover letter from the authors. However, I recognize this paper as having a fragile scientific quality, as only fundamental features of the machines are studied, but this could be treated as preliminary research and fits into the state-of-the-art papers based on a similar level of acoustic analysis.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf