The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1417175
Pike County SWCD STAFF DIRECTORY Board of Supervisors: Norman Dillon, Chairman Paul Lake, Vice-Chairman Tom Rudolph, Supervisor Brad Smith, Supervisor Ryan Loos, Supervisor Office Staff Soil & Water Conservation District (SWCD) Lydia Spann, Soil Technician Kyla Estey, District Coordinator Watershed Coordinator Julie Loehr Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) Morgan Devine, District Conservationist MEETING INFORMATION Pike County SWCD board meetings are held on the first Tuesday of every month @ 5:30pm EST unless oth- erwise advertised. The public is invited to attend all meet- ings. **We are meeting at the USDA Service Center again; however, due to COVID we are unable to accommodate more than 10 due to capacity restrictions. For a member of the public to attend the meeting, you must call the of- fice prior to the meeting to determine whether we will have to meet at a different location or not. 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C L L a c i r e m A l a i r t s u d n I H N C 1 2 0 2 © . e c i t o n t u o h t i l . s e t a i l fi f a r o s e i r a i d i s b u s s t i , . V . N l a i r t s u d n I H N C o t d e s n e c i MORE SAVINGS. NOW'S THE TIME TO HARVEST 0% Financing * Cash Back offers! and GET EQUIPMENT THAT WORKS AS HARD AS YOU DO DURING HARVEST DAYS. Be ready for your next harvest and save with reliable, productive New Holland tractors and equipment. See us for special offers on select mid-range and high-horsepower tractors, hay and forage equipment, and more. Rely on New Holland power and versatility to make this harvest your best. www.BLESCHBROS.com WE SERVICE WHAT WE SELL! Equipment Company 407 E Kentucky Ave, Holland 812-536-3486 0% FINANCING * AND CASH BACK OFFERS! D , e v a s o t s y a w e r o m e r a e r e h t , t n e v e s e l a s a z n a n o B e u l a V s ' r a e y s i h t g n i r u i % 0 g n i d u l c n F G N I C N A N I * d n a C S R E F F O K C A B H S A t c e l e s n o N e h t n o r a e y e h t f o s g n i v a s t s e b e h t d n fi l l ' u o Y . s t c u d o r p d n a l l o H w e N e s e h t t u B . n o e y e r u o y d a h e v ' u o y t n e m p i u q e d n a r o t c a r t d n a l l o H w e o s d n e a z n a n o B e u l a V — g n o l t s a l t ' n o w s r e f f D 1 2 0 2 , 1 3 r e b m e c e — o s h t i s i v r o y a d o t n i y r r u n m o c . s r e f f o h . *For commercial use only. Customer participation subject to credit qualification and approval by CNH Industrial Capital America LLC. See your New Holland dealer for details and eligibility requirements. CNH Industrial Capital America LLC standard terms and conditions will apply. Down payment may be required. Not all customers or applicants may qualify. Offer good until December 31, 2021, at participating New Holland dealers in the United States. Taxes, freight, set-up, delivery, additional options or attachments not included in suggested retail price. Offer subject to change or cancellation without notice. © 2021 CNH Industrial America LLC. All rights reserved. CNH Industrial Capital and New Holland are trademarks registered in the United States and many other countries, owned by or licensed to CNH Industrial N.V., its subsidiaries or affiliates. D-8 Pike County Planter ■ Autumn 2021 The Press-Dispatch For More Information: Counter-Flow Grain Drying Systems More than a Grain Dryer shivvers.com At Shivvers, we understand your crop is more than just a crop. It is your livelihood. It is your pride and joy. Since 1968, the Shivvers family has been perfecting the science of counter-flow grain drying and creating innovative products that we are proud to put our name on. Shivvers doesn't just sell you a grain drying system. We provide you with peace of mind. We certify capacities. Explore a Shivvers Performance System today for • Complete, Precise Control • High Efficiency • High Test Weights and much more! For Counter-Flow Grain Drying More than a Grain shivvers.com At Shivvers, we understand your crop is more than just a crop. Since 1968, the Shivvers family has been perfecting the science creating innovative products that we are proud to put our Shivvers doesn't just sell you a grain drying system. We provide capacities. Explore a Shivvers Performance System today for • Complete, Precise Control • High Efficiency • High Test Weights and much more! K iesel Enterprises I N C O R P O R A T E D 812-386-6580 1198 South Kiesel Drive, Princeton, IN 47670 For more information, visit us at: At Shivvers, we understand your crop is more than just a crop. It is your livelihood. It is your pride and joy. Since 1968, the Shivvers family has been perfecting the science of counter-flow grain drying and creating innovative products that we are proud to put our name on. Shivvers doesn't just sell you a grain drying system. We provide you with peace of mind. We certify capacities. Explore a Shivvers Performance System today for • Complete, Precise Control • High Efficiency • High Test Weights • and much more! www.shivvers.com Outstanding in their field: Tractor efficiency increased, thanks to hydraulics research By Jared Pike Purdue News Service wiles5@purdue.edu Modern agricultural trac- tors contain so much cut- ting-edge technology, they ri- val even the latest spacecraft. But the back end is still old- school, relying largely on fos- sil fuels. So any optimization in tractor efficiency is a huge win for the environment. With this in mind, Purdue University researchers have undertaken a $ 3.2 million Department of Energy proj- ect to optimize the hydraulic systems that connect tractors and implements. "Fluid power is every- where," said Andrea Vacca, Purdue's Maha Fluid Power Faculty Chair, professor of mechanical engineering and agricultural and biological en- gineering, and director of the Maha Fluid Power Research Center, the largest academic hydraulics lab in the country. "It's used in airplanes, in cars, and in all kinds of heavy equip- ment. A tractor is an example of a vehicle that uses fluid pow- er to actuate everything from the steering and propulsion, to powering the implements it pulls behind it." But powering the imple- ments has proven to be a problem. The hydraulic con- trol system of the tractor has shown only 20 % efficien- cy when connected to the hy- draulic systems of certain im- plements like planters, seed- ers and bailers. "There's a conflict in the controls, where the two sys- tems are almost fighting each other," said Patrick Stump, a Ph.D. student in mechani- cal engineering. "As a result, when it's connected to a plant- er, the tractor always has to run at extremely high power, which wastes fuel and increas- es emissions." In this study, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable En- ergy, Vacca's team focused its attention on a specific combo of tractor and planter, both provided by Case New Hol- land Industrial, with hydrau- lic systems provided by Bosch Rexroth. The planter is 40 feet wide, with 16 planting rows. "Each row has multiple machines working together to plant the seed," said Xiao- fan Guo, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering. "There's a cleaning wheel in front to remove existing vege- tation. A cutting disc cuts a ti- ny ditch in the ground, a mo- tor actually drives the seeds into the ground, a sprayer feeds water and fertilizer into the hole and then a final disc covers the hole. There are 16 of these planting rows, which need specific amounts of pres- sure to successfully plant the seeds. And all of them are powered by a single hydrau- lic system." To tackle the problem of optimizing the tractor-plant- er combo, Vacca's team chose a three-phase approach. First, the researchers needed to characterize the hydraulic system and build a simulation model in the computer. "These tractors are expen- sive and complex machines," said Xin Tian, a Ph.D. stu- dent who developed the mod- els over a four-year span. "So we started by modeling indi- vidual components and testing them in a stationary condition here in the lab. When those are accurate, we combine the component models into a sys- tem – and test the system – so we can verify that the entire model is valid. The model is so big and complex, my team calls it 'The Monster! '" Once they had validated their model, the researchers moved to phase two: develop- ing solutions they could test. "Different planting con- ditions require different amounts of pressure and flow rate," Tian said. "If the mod- el shows promising improve- ments in power and efficien- cy, then we can begin to im- plement these changes under real-world conditions." For the third phase – re- al-world tests – the team out- fitted the tractor-planter com- bo with a myriad of sensors. "We need to know how much power the tractor is consuming, what the hydrau- lic pumps are doing, and what the pressure and flow rates are throughout the planter," said Jake Lengacher, a first-year Ph.D. student. "All of that wir- ing leads into a new data acqui- sition box we installed in the cab, so we have a full picture of what's going on during a plant- ing cycle." Thankfully for the team, Purdue has plenty of plac- es for giant tractors to roam. The College of Agriculture allotted Vacca's team a quar- ter-mile strip of land at the An- imal Sciences Research and Education Center in West La- fayette. "We are very fortunate at Purdue," Vacca said. "We have a lot of lab space at Ma- ha where we can test these large machines under con- trolled conditions; and Agri- culture also has lots of farm plots where we can conduct field research." And since none of the team members had ever operat- ed such a large tractor in the field, Case New Holland pro- vided training to teach them how to drive. "The sheer power of a 25,000 -pound tractor with 435 horsepower, towing a 10,000 -pound planter – it's amazing," Stump said. "But there's also quite a lot going on in the cab, especially to op- erate the planter. It's definitely a two-man job, so usually Jake is also in the cab monitoring the data on a laptop." The team conducted sever- al runs in the spring of 2021, where they planted corn seeds at different pre-determined engine speeds and planting rates. Combing through the data, they found that their new hydraulic control systems translated into an overall 25% efficiency increase. "Given the amount of fu- el that a typical tractor con- sumes, that's a massive im- provement," Vacca said. "And this is only the beginning. Our project goal is to double the ef- ficiency of the overall hydrau- lic control system. In the fu- ture, we plan on instituting a pressure control approach for the control logic, which has never been attempted in agri- cultural vehicles." "When I saw the data that proved our solution worked, I was so happy," Guo said. "I grew up in a city, so be- ing out on a farm like this is a pretty exciting experience for me. My specialty is con- trol systems, so it was so in- teresting to see our theories in the lab being put to the test in the real world. Fluid power is a well-established field, but there is still so much potential to propose new systems and new architectures to make things even better." Stump said, "I never imag- ined I would be driving a trac- tor through a farm field for my Ph.D. I had plans to go in- to aerospace. But the hydrau- lics on these tractors is every bit as complex as an airplane or a rocket. Diving deep into fluid power has been hugely applicable to my future in en- gineering." Tian said, "It's certainly the highlight of my time here at Purdue. I put so much time into these models, and to see the improvement in the results was really a happy moment for me." Vacca said, "Seeing our stu- dents' hard work – and wit- nessing an idea get from the lab to the field – that's really the best part of our job." Agricultural tractors and implements use a lot of hydraulic power. By creating new solutions to optimize their hydraulic control systems, Purdue researchers (left to right) Andrea Vacca, Xiaofan Guo, Patrick Stump, and Jake Lengacher are working to make tractors more powerful and fuel-efficient. Purdue University photo