Comparison of Technical Specifications and Performances of Wind Machines

Agricultural practices are always under natural disaster risks since farms are open areas to meteorological factors. These risks can be classified as snow, hurricane, flood, tornado and frost. Frost, one of the most important one of these risks, especially affects fruit gardens and has a 30% of total damage in vegetable production. Till now farmers have used to burn bales or plastic wheels to produce a heat cover in the gardens to protect trees. Today more technological method of frost protection which is wind machine is used to avoid frost. Wind machines are commonly used in Adana since fruit gardens are so susceptible due to wide open gardens and often frost occurrences in season changes. In this research 3 different make and model of frost protector wind machines’ technical specifications and performances are determined. According to the results it was found that two different power groups of wind machines are commonly used. It was also determined that these machines have protection radius of between 100 to 136 meters and protection area between 3 to 6 hectares. According to the test results, the air flow has an effect between 2 to 5 meters from the ground. The sound pressure levels of these machines were over 85 dBA which is determined as the highest sound pressure exposure level by ILO (International Labor Organization).

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