<p>About 10% of the world’s workforce is directly dependent on agriculture for income and about 99% of food consumed by humans comes from farming. Agriculture is highly climate dependent and with global warming and rapidly changing weather it has become necessary to closely monitor the environment of growing crops for maximizing output as well as increasing food security while minimizing resource usage. In this study, we developed a low cost system which will monitor the temperature, humidity, light intensity and soil moisture of crops and send it to an online server for storage and analysis, based on this data the system can control actuators to control the growth parameters. The three tier system architecture consists of sensors and actuators on the lower level followed by an 8-bit AVR microcontroller which is used for data acquisition and processing topped by an ESP8266 Wi-Fi module which communicates with the internet server. The system uses relay to control actuators such as pumps to irrigate the fields; online weather data is used to optimize the irrigation cycles. The prototyped system was subject to several tests, the experimental results express the systems reliability and accuracy which accentuate its feasibility in real-world applications.</p>
Ultrasonic vibration assisted grinding (UAG) has proven to lower the forces and improve the ground surface quality while shaping difficult to grind materials such as ceramics. A systematic study of UAG of alumina ceramic using a metal bonded diamond grinding wheel has been performed here. Taguchi’s L18 array based experimentation has been performed to study the effect of UAG parameters. During UAG, the vibration amplitudes of 6 and 12 microns have been used and the frequency has been kept at 20 kHz. From these experiments, optimum parameters for UAG have been identified using Grey relational analysis. Mathematical models generated using regression analysis have been found to correlate the experimental data with good accuracy. A comparison of the grinding forces and roughness of the surfaces generated in dry and minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) conditions in both conventional grinding and optimal condition in UAG has been performed to identify the beneficial effects of providing vibration to the workpiece. The surface quality has been evaluated using 3D roughness data, 3D plots and SEM images of the ground surface. By examining nature of the ground surface and kurtosis (Sku) values of the surface profile, it has been concluded that UAG reduces brittle fracture and facilitates material removal by ductile mode for alumina. The desired condition of least machining forces and highest surface quality has been achieved during the combination of UAG and MQL.
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