A highly efficient soil-burrowing dung beetle possesses an intricate outer contour curve on its foreleg end-tooth. This study\nwas carried out based on evidence that this special outer contour curve has the potential of reducing soil penetration\nresistance and could enhance soil-burrowing efficiency. A toothed wheel is a typical agricultural implement for soil\nimprinting, to increase its working efficiency; the approach of the bionic geometrical structure was utilized to optimize the\ninnovative shape of imprinting toothed wheel. Characteristics in the dung beetle�s foreleg end-tooth were extracted and\nstudied by the edge detection technique. Then, this special outer contour curve was modeled by a nine-order polynomial\nfunction and used for the innovative design of imprinting the tooth�s cutting edge. Both the conventional and bionic teeth\nwere manufactured, and traction tests in a soil bin were conducted. Taking required draft force and volume of imprinted\nmicrobasin as the evaluating indexes, operating efficiency and quality of different toothed wheels were compared and\ninvestigated. Results indicate that compared with the conventional toothed wheel, a bionic toothed wheel possesses a better\nforward resistance reduction property against soil and, meanwhile, can enhance the quality of soil imprinting by increasing\nthe volume of the created micro-basin.
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