Improvement of the mole plough design for formation of a mole irrigation system in the lower Volga Region

Based on research conducted in 2022 at the Educational Research and Production Center of the Volgograd State Agrarian University «Gornaya Polyana», the article presents the results of studying of the mole maker main elements (two rack options and three forms of expanders for them), as the main working body for the formation mole irrigators – the main elements of the mole irrigation system. It has been established that trapezoidal racks with a “knife” (a front cutting edge 30 mm wide along the entire height of the stand) and a “chisel” (a rectangular cutting surface of the drainer) with a cone parabolic expander 380 mm long attached to it form the best mole plough construction.

Introduction. At present, drip subsoil irrigation is being intensively developed in the USA, Israel and other countries. The main advantage of these systems, in comparison with drip irrigation, is the complete mechanization of laying drip pipes with a diameter of 16 mm into the soil to a depth of 0.5 m. In this regard, the use of mole irrigation systems, as a main type of subsurface irrigation, consisting of the soil pipes, is a more efficient and cheaper method to deliver water and fertilizers directly to the roots of plants. Such soil pipes (mole sprinklers) are formed annually after the passage of a mole-maker, a special working body fixed on the frame of the MTZ-82 tractor.

Object. Mole plough for formation of the mole sprinklers.

Materials and methods. In the field experiments carried out at the Educational Research and Production Center of the Volgograd State Agrarian University «Gornaya Polyana», 2 variants of the mole-maker stand and 3 forms of expanders for them were investigated. The racks were trapezoidal form with «knife» (a front cutting edge 30 mm wide along the entire height of the stand) and with «chisel» (a rectangular cutting surface of the drainer) and a rectangular shape with an ellipsoid shape of the cutting surface of the drainer. The expanders were a combination of a cone and a cylinder (cone-cylindrical); cone and paraboloid (cone-parabolic) and on the contrary, paraboloid and cone (parabolic-cone) shape 300 and 380 mm long. The choice of the most effective design was evaluated by the degree of the molehill destruction.

Results and conclusions. Comparison of two variants of the mole rack showed that the design of the trapezoidal shape with a «knife» and a «chisel» was much more efficient, because for any shape and size of the expanders, the degree of destruction of the formed molehills was 5 ... 38% lower than when using a rectangular form with an ellipsoid the shape of the cutting surface of the drainer. Evaluation of the expander various options made it possible to establish that the cone-parabolic shape of the expander 380 mm long made it possible to form the most dense form of mole irrigators with a diameter of 50 ... 70 mm at a depth of 0.45 ... 0.50 m, minimizing the degree of destruction. The obtained results will be used to create an effective mole irrigation system for technical (on the example of cotton) and leguminous crops (on the example of soybeans).

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