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I'm looking into the patterns used to position "padfeet" on a padfoot soil compactor. The point of the feet is to gain an increased ground pressure, the downside is that as you roll over an area you only cover a certain percent of the ground, in this case 15% each time.(I've already calculated average % you will hit with each successive pass"
The pattern that is typically used is the chevron(bottom right, spaces removed). What is done is that the operator will roll forward and back over and area, and then turn around 180 degrees and repeat up to 6-8 total passes. The reversing is done to purposely decrease the chance of overlapping the "V"'s.
My question is, I've considered changing this to either the gull wing(bottom left and top with accurate spacing) or a even more scattered pattern such as putting row 5 as the 3rd impact, thus making a double chevron. Looking at this, I visually perceive this to be a "more random" pattern, but is there a way quantify or define a difference between the changing patterns when they are both "equal" in their coverage. Or is it just in my head.
Thinking a bit more about it: What I've calculated previously (with some assistance) is the % coverage from each pass"In general if the compactor affects p fraction of the area each time, after n passes it will have covered 1−(1−p)n of the area. So to cover 90% in 8 passes, you'll need just about 25% coverage on each pass, as 1−(1−.25)8≈90%."
The purpose of the 180 turn is to better mimic this calcuation, because you don't have a unique pattern hit with every pass, and if you overlap while just driving forwards and back you're likely to overlap with all 9 rows. It seems like introducing a change to the pattern going around the drum, so that the pattern does not repeat identically for all 15 chevrons around the circumference, but adjusts slightly so that even when an overlap takes place it takes place to a lesser percent.
That still doesn't tell me if/how the shape of "each" pattern matters or not though.