Design, construction and evaluation of a mechanical transducer to measure aggregate sizes in real time were\r\nconducted by the same authors. The spring tines were instrumented using the strain gauges and tested in field conditions.\r\nThe main conclusion is that the spring tine transducers could be used as sensors to estimate the mean weight diameter of a given\r\nclod size distribution. In order to evaluate the influence of working speed and depth on performance of the tine transducer,\r\nfactorial experiments were conducted based on randomized complete block design with three replications. Working speed and\r\ndepth were investigated each at three levels. The results of the variance analysis showed that sensing speed and depth affect\r\ntine transducer performance independently. Sensing speed has a very little impact on performance of tine transducer but\r\nsensing depth has a significant impact on performance of tine transducer. Results also showed that the higher sensing depth\r\nand speed the higher horizontal force on the spring tines. Optimal sensing speed of 5 km h-1 was chosen in order to reduce the\r\neffect of inertia forces due to higher speeds than the critical speed and avoid of plastic deformation and failure of the tine.\r\nMechanical transducer was calibrated with sensing depth of 70 mm in order to avoid getting into excessive force to the tines\r\nand considering the root depth of the various products in the soil.
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