The plant type parameters, which can be used to track and study the morphological changes of crop organs, are of great importance for breeders and testers. Based on the structural characteristics of mature rapeseed, an automatic measuring system for rapeseed plant type parameters was studied, through which the parameters of primary branches including their quantity, position, and branching angle and the geometric parameters such as plant height, main stem width, main raceme length, and the first branch height were measured. The system hardware includes a manual cutting-short device, an image acquisition darkroom, and a control circuit, used for capturing videos of a stably rotating rapeseed plant in a darkroom with an adjustable light source. The system software is used to connect and control CCD camera and other hardware and run specific image processing algorithms to process and analyze videos to obtain plant type parameters. The human-machine interface provided by the system can be used to set working parameters and display and process measurement results. To evaluate the accuracy of this prototype, batches of rapeseed plants were tested. The results showed that the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) for the system was about 2.74%, and the automatic measurements had a good agreement with manual measurements. The measuring efficiency was approximately 2.1 times over manual method. In conclusion, the system, which automatically extracts plant type parameters with high throughput and high precision, is of practical value as it can effectively reduce the labor intensity of researchers and provide important basic data for the research of rapeseed breeding and agricultural machinery design.
Controlling the segregation behavior of primary Si in the solidification process of hypereutectic Al-Si alloy is crucial for enhancing the design ability of the solidification structure. To explore the separation condition and morphological evolution of primary Si in detail, a series of experiments concerning the coupling effect of a temperature field and electromagnetic stirring on the segregation behavior of primary Si were carried out. Experimental results show that the temperature field and fluid flow in the melt are two key points for controlling the segregation behavior of primary Si. The establishment of a temperature gradient in the Al-Si melt is a precondition for realizing the separation of primary Si. On the basis of the temperature gradient, the electromagnetic stirring can further strengthen the separation effect for primary Si, forming a Si-rich layer with 65~70 wt.% Si content. The formation of the Si-rich layer is a continuous growth process of primary Si by absorbing Si atoms from Al-Si melt with the help of electromagnetic stirring. The separation technology for primary Si is proposed to realize the segregation control of primary Si, which not only broadens the application of Al-Si alloys in the functionally gradient composites but also provides a low-cost supply strategy of Si raw materials for the solar photovoltaic industry.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.