Abstract:
The Ethiopian Arda plough is the most commonly used farm tool implement in Ethiopia. Nevertheless, using this plough as farm tool is labour intensive, time taking, shallow depth and narrow cutting width. Despite, the efforts made to replace this traditional plough with modern mouldboard plough by different researchers at different times, farmers rejected the improved ploughs for number of reasons. Thus this research was initiated to come out with a solution to the aforementioned problems. Therefore, the objectives of this research are to model the basic components of animal drawn multiple mouldboard plough and to fabricate and test the prototype. A total of eight alternative options are considered for conceptual design. Of these, without seat to operator, two wheels, two handles and beam attachment design is selected using meritdemerit analysis, pairwise and direct matrix ranking methods. In addition the prototype is prepared in Bahir Dar University Institute of Technology Workshop using locally available materials and tested using oxen and horses as draft animals in Nitrosol and Vertisols at Burie and Gozamin districts of East and West Gojjam Zones of Amhara regional state, which represent the two most dominant soil types, respectively. The results of the field observation as well as data generated in the experiment indicated there was a significant difference between the ard plough and the newly designed prototype in time efficiency, draft force and cutting width. The newly designed prototype reduces time spent and increasing cutting width for ploughing by 39.30%, in Nitrosol and 35.70%. In Vertisols compare to traditional ard plough. The mass of the newly designed plough and ard plough are 33.80 kg and 27.50 kg, respectively. These indicate that the mass of new design is almost near to traditional ard plough. The new design mass is support by wheel so it need less draft force relative to traditional ard plough. From field test observation using pocket balancing new design reduced 15.3% at Nitrisols and 16.5% Vertisoils draft force compared to traditional ard plough in different soil types with similar landing levels. The prototype has got wider acceptance by farmers in Nitrosol (red soil) of Burie district whereas in Vertisol (black soil) there is a limitation on drafting power because of the higher soil moisture content.