Department of Environmental & Biosystems Engineering

The objective of the project is to enhance national higher education offer by means of the introduction of specific teaching modules in the fields of Energy and Agro-food consistent with the needs of the regional and local labour market. The aim is the one of improving academic staff’s competences and expertise according to four main criteria:

1. Integration between the Energy and Agro-food thematic fields;
2. Interdisciplinarity (with academic staff of different fields of research);
3. Intersectoriality (stakeholders of the interested economic/institutional sectors joining the project’s activities);
4. Interregionality (implementing and scaling activities up to regional level).

Compaction of agricultural soils is a great problem facing many farmers whose farms lie in cohesive soils worldwide. Research has shown that crop productivity in any agricultural system is adversely affected by soil compaction which is caused, among other factors, by conventional tillage practises. However, conventional tillage practises like ripping are still popular and have found application in the more modern conservation agriculture. Like most other conventional tillage methods, ripping requires enormous draft forces that translate into high energy requirements; ripping tools must then be designed to optimise energy efficiency while still achieving the desired soil condition.

This research examines the applicability of EDEM in simulating a ripping operation in a cohesive soil to establish the optimal tool design parameters and operational parameters that will result to optimal energy usage.

The objectives of this study are:
– To evaluate the values of the tillage parameters pertinent to ripping
– To apply, verify and validate a discrete element model using the parameters identified above to predict the soil resistance
– To optimize the ripping parameters to achieve reduced soil resistance.

KENDAT was established & registered in 1992 as Kenya Network for Draft Animal Technology, and was re-registered with the wider Agribusiness Development mandate in 2005 with the Office of the President as Kenya Network for Dissemination of Agricultural Technologies.

KENDAT Purpose: To model innovative, efficient and resilient smallholder agribusiness systems for an Evergreen Africa.  

The KENDAT Vision: Kenyan rural and peri-urban farming communities living in productive, food-secure and competitive agri-business systems.

The KENDAT Mission: We empower smallholder farmers to sustainably improve their livelihoods through innovative access to information, technology, means and markets.

These two institutions have established collaboration in:

• Staff Exchange
• Research in Environmental and Biosystems engineering.

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