Improvement of Centrifugal Spreader Performance in order to Spread the Pellet Fertilizer

In this study, a software model was developed for the spreader unit of a centrifugal fertilizer and its spread performance was studied with different blade designs to recommend the best suitable blade for spreading of the pellet fertilizer. The blade designs include trapezoid, angled trapezoid, channel (U shape) and angle (L shape) that were compared with the control blade. In order to validate the software's results, a laboratory spreader device was fabricated based on a commercial centrifugal fertilizer machine. The spread pattern of the designed blades was investigated experimentally in a completely randomized design with three replications. The influence of blade design as the dependent variable, on Total Transverse Spreading Pattern (TTSP) and Coefficient of Variation (CV) as the dependent variables, was investigated to achieve the best design for blade in the experimental mode. Results showed that the trapezoid blade, among other blades, had the best spread performance with in the effective swath width during pellet spreading (CV=0.18). Other blades were ranked as angle blade (CV=0.29), channel blade (CV=0.38), angled trapezoid blade (CV= 0.57) and control blade (CV= 0.64) respectively. This ranking observed for both numerical software and the experimental results. Investigation on adaptation and compatibility between the software model and experimental results showed that, for all blades designs, there were acceptable agreements between software model and experimental (R2 ≥ 0.90).