Vol. 12, Issue 10 (2023)

Author(s):
Shubham Dhakad, RC Salunkhe, KL Dabhi and Pankaj Gupta

Abstract:
The study focuses on the development of a patternater and the determination of effective swath width for an agricultural drone sprayer. The experiment involved assessing the uniformity coefficient (UC), coefficient of variation (CV) and off-target losses for various combinations of spraying height and discharge rate. A patternater with 40 V-shaped channels was fabricated to collect spray liquid for analysis. The calibration of the drone was conducted to measure the spray pattern at different treatment combinations. Overlapping of the spray pattern was employed to find the effective swath width by optimized UC and CV. The results revealed that the effective swath width was influenced by spraying height. Discharge rate had no significant effect on effective swath width. The findings provide valuable insights for optimizing agricultural drone sprayer operations to achieve uniform application of spray liquid during field spraying. The effective or actual swath width was found as 2.1, 2.3 and 2.5 m for spraying height 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 m respectively for the drone sprayer under study.