Brazilian production of alcohol and sugar holds an important position among producing countries, with 5.4 million hectares of sugarcane harvested by the industry during 2000. The State of São Paulo contributes with 2.5 million hectares of this total. The agricultural operations represent approximately 65% of the total sugar and alcohol production costs. Nearly 45% of the agricultural operational cost is due to planting. The low yield for conventional planting operations where an operator plants about 0.27 ha d-1 justifies the development of a mechanism, designed for uniform plant distribution. The objective of this work was to improve the performance of an existing sugarcane planter, using computational engineering aids such us WM3D and MatLab. The optimized model simulated with only one of the analyzed sugarcane diameters, showed satisfactory results, with characteristics compatible with the models presenting ideal operational conditions. Optimized model simulations for cane diameter varying by 10 mm showed cells filled with excess of billets, which is in agreement with the experimental results.
Saccharum officinarum; planting; dynamic simulation
