Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 268, 20 September 2020, 122206
Journal of Cleaner Production

Ecodesign method of intelligent boom sprayer based on Preferable Brownfield Process

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122206Get rights and content

Abstract

An intelligent boom sprayer (IBS) can realize efficient, precise and variable pesticides spraying operations on diverse crops and terrains by reconfiguring its hardware/software modules. Therefore, an ecological and reconfigurable design development strategy for IBS to get design goals, such as detachability, recyclability, maintainability, and reusability, will play a key role in ensuring the functions, service life and quality requirements of the product. After analyzing connotation and features of IBS,the Brownfield Process (BfP) was optimized to construct a Preferable Brownfield Process (P-BfP) which could achieve IBS ecodesign goals through analyzing the applicability and interference of IBS design and using Axiomatic Design (AD) as a main optimization theory role. The content identification and communication mechanism of the P-BfP were studied. The importance of existing resource reuse and standardization in the product design process for ecodesign was also highlighted. Dynamic models of BfP and P-BfP were built by using System Dynamics (SD) for providing a method to optimize the P-BfP design process. The simulation results showed that the P-BfP is more suitable for IBS design than the BfP from the time dimension by applying Vensim PLE and can improve the operating efficiency by 40% and reduce the training time by 50% while scientifically guiding the development of IBS. Finally, the feasibility of P-BfP was illustrated through comparing boom structure development result. The research results provide valuable scientific guidance for the ecodesign of reconfigurable modular products like IBS.

Introduction

Ecodesign was defined as integration of environmental aspects into product design and development, with the aim of reducing adverse environmental impacts throughout a product’s life cycle in ISO 14006:2011(en). Designers would focus on ecodesign due to the deteriorating environment and increasingly strained resources (Sun, 2015). The ecodesign of agricultural machinery should be especially concerned because agricultural production process has a direct impact on the local ecological environment. Boom sprayers are typical agricultural machinery to control grass and pest damage on crops (Jia et al., 2013). It should be developed in an intelligent direction due to main task of intelligent agricultural machinery system (Li and Zhai, 2015) and new features of ecodesign (Niu, 2016), to meet the green manufacturing goals including low resource consumption, minimal negative ecological impacts and minimal human health and safety hazard, and to achieve continuous coordination and optimization of economic and social benefits of companies in product life cycle (Sun, 2015). Therefore, IBS, intelligent boom sprayer, can be defined as a boom sprayer which can change the configuration of boom sprayers according to requirements of the application objects and topographies. Obviously, reconfigurability is an important feature in IBS. IBS should respond to work demands rapidly when operation conditions change by reconfiguring software/hardware modules in IBS. Therefore, IBS is a complex intelligent plant-protection mechanical system, following the design of product systems, relying on some technologies like 3S, the internet of things, cloud big data processing and remote control and so on, using rearranged groups, expanded and innovated modules, achieving low reconstruction costs, short job preparation time, high-quality, fast reconfiguration modules, thus to effectively complete the precise and variable application tasks of spraying pesticides with real-time processing results based on cloud data and remote control services, and to achieve multi-purpose use, avoid wastes of agricultural equipment resources and reduce pesticide costs.

Obviously, ecodesign of IBS can help get economic and ecological benefits for companies significantly. Ecodesign concept was mainly applied to 6 aspects including green energy, green manufacture, green architectures, green supply chain, green chemical engineering and green materials (Lian and Dong, 2016). In order to better implement the ecodesign concept, some methods are applied to the design process, which include TRIZ method based on rule-based reasoning and case-based reasoning (Liu et al., 2014), Multi-objective green design model (Choi et al., 2019), product life cycle management system (Hery et al., 2015), Ecodesign maturity model(Pigosso et al., 2013), life cycle assessment and ant colony optimization (Ng, 2018), “Eco-tool-seeker” method (Rousseaux et al., 2017), digital twin (Xiang et al., 2019) and data mining (Zhang et al., 2019), and so on. These methods usually focus on specific issues and rarely consider all key engineering concepts, which are partitioning logic, set of modules, interfaces, architecture and configuration knowledge. These key engineering concepts are essential for modular product family development (Pakkanen et al., 2016). Therefore, ecodesign of IBS should focus on key engineering concepts and reconfigurability. Brownfield Process (BfP) is a product development approach for modular product families, including all key engineering concepts, emphasizing the reuse of existing resources, and focusing on the standardization while rationalizing product diversity (Lehtonen et al., 2011; Pakkanen et al., 2016). It could achieve IBS design demands about ecodesign, reconfigurability and key engineering concepts.

Currently, some researches have focused on the design of boom sprayers. In the development of the whole machine, there were some ways to conduct new machine development such as the application of new technologies and new equipment (Shen et al., 2016; Wu et al., 2018), thus solving problems arising from the operation of equipment (Pan et al., 2016), focusing on different crop application requirements (Xu et al., 2016; Zhu et al., 2018; Zhao et al., 2016), and so on. In the research of the components of boom sprayers, there were mainly the lightweight and dynamic characteristics of the frame (Yuan and Xu, 2017; Chen et al., 2013), the balance and reliability of the chassis (Chang et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2014) and the adaptation to different geographical requirements of crops (Xu, 2015; Li et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2017a), structural optimization of damping of suspension (Cui et al., 2017, 2018; Anthonis et al., 2005), optimization of pesticides mixing device (Dai et al., 2019), profile design of boom (Yin, 2015) and structural optimization (Ali et al., 2012; Tahmasebi et al., 2018a, Tahmasebi et al., 2018b; Koc, 2017) and design and selection of hydraulic components (Breidi et al., 2017; Zou et al., 2018), and so on. In the research of control system, the focus was on the spray system to achieve precise, variable, low drift, low dose (Deng et al., 2014 Wang et al., 2017b; Tewari et al., 2018; Ilica and Boz, 2018; Qin et al., 2016) and boom system for boom configuration (Yin, 2015; Diao et al., 2016), and so on. In the research of power system, the application of new technologies (Bulgakov et al., 2015) like energy conservation (Breidi et al., 2017), rational distribution of power (Yuan et al., 2014) and solving operational problems (Zou et al., 2018) have been mainly conducted.

In summary, the design research of the existing boom sprayers was mainly based on the problem-oriented design of the whole machine and components. Additionally, ecodesign concept had been applied to boom sprayers, such as the chassis lightweight and energy saving technologies, etc. However, the present research on the ecodesign method of the whole machine based on the design theory was rarely involved, especially in the emerging and rapid development of new technologies.

The whole machine ecodesign of IBS would contribute to meeting enterprise resource optimization, reducing unvalued design or production process, and decreasing enterprise total cost in product life cycle. Therefore, the objectives of the paper were to carry out the research on the systematic ecodesign method of IBS with BfP, guide the reuse and optimization of resources in company, meet the requirements of green manufacturing, lead to more theoretical and practical guidance in design process, and ensure advantages of IBS for promoting the development goals of intelligent agriculture. The connotation and characteristics of IBS were analyzed for scientifically guide the design and development of it. In order to solve the applicability limitation and conduct the interference analysis of BfP to design IBS, the approaches to meet the design of IBS based on BfP. P-BfP (Preferable Brownfield Process) was researched as a design process for adapting to the ecodesign requirements of IBS reconfigurable system and achieving ecological and economic benefits of companies, which main construction process utilized axiomatic design as the main optimal theory to improve the IBS design process based on the analysis of suitability of IBS design with BfP. And P-BfP dynamic models were built by using System Dynamic to provide a method for optimizing the P-BfP. Furthermore, P-BfP should focus on reusing existing resource and standardization in IBS design to meet ecodesign.

Section snippets

BfP process

BfP integrates all key engineering concepts into design methods and emphasizes reuse of existing resources for modular product family development. Its contents are as shown follows (Pakkanen et al., 2016).

Firstly, BfP defined the requirements from the business environment by manual definition using the Company Strategic Landscape or cause-and-effect diagram of benefits of variety with commonality (step 1). After that, a preliminary module division (step 2) was defined by manual planning

P-BfP design process on IBS

The P-BfP should improve the applicability limitation of BfP to IBS ecodesign. In order to facilitate the integration with AD, the key route and ECRS (elimination, combination, rearrangement and simplification) method were used to analyze and optimize BfP. Furthermore, as shown in Fig. 1, a P-BfP design process with BfP as the design framework and incorporating AD for IBS development and design could be formed.

Through the analysis of Fig. 1, the P-BfP consists of two major parts, the

System dynamics model of P-BfP and BfP

System dynamics (SD) regards the computer as a tool to analyze the system structure and behavior of research objects to provide useful information to optimize the system. SD has achieved good results in personnel behavior analysis, company technology innovation, and manufacturing system analysis (Wang et al., 2017c; Wu et al., 2010; Xue, 2013). The design activity process of the designer using the P-BfP method is the system boundary, and the process is regarded as a social system for SD

The case study

In addition to field crops, the planting area of fruit trees continues to expand (Yin, 2015). The development of boom sprayers should meet the farmers’ requirements for plants protection of different planting methods, achieve economic and ecological benefits with minimum cost in company production, and fully consider the economic affordability of farmers. The boom sprayer should meet plant protection requirements of fence, field and forest plants by reconfiguring hardware/software modules of

Conclusions

As the four limiting factors, including different focuses, different design concepts, different constraints and different communication mechanisms, led to the applicability limitation of BfP to design the IBS, the BfP was optimized to construct a P-BfP for the IBS design from the perspective of improving the limiting factors and the AD as the optimization support theory after analyzing connotation and features of IBS. The content establishment and communication mechanism of the P-BfP were

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Luqiang Ma: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Youlin Xu: Resources, Supervision, Writing - review & editing. Jiaqiang Zheng: Supervision, Writing - review & editing. Xiang Dai: Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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