Substantiation of the technological scheme of a rotary root harvest machine and main parameters

Abstract

Potato is one of the most common crops in Ukraine, most domestic farms are engaged in its production - from the population to large agricultural firms. Moreover, about 95% of the potato produced falls on household plots, which are characterized by the widespread use of manual labor in most technological harvesting operations and low mechanization of the harvesting process as a whole.

Harvesting remains the most resource-intensive process in potato production, because today, as you know, the share of energy and labor costs of harvesting processes is 50-60% and 60-70%, respectively.

From a brief analytical review of the works devoted to the study of under-digging-separating working bodies of root-tuber harvesters, it can be seen that by now significant theoretical and experimental material has already been accumulated, revealing the patterns of interaction processes of working bodies of various designs with tuberous mass. However, despite this, to date, it has not been possible to create a sufficiently efficient, reliable, low-energy, which will satisfy all agrotechnical requirements for root and tuber harvesters, and the problem of developing such a device is still relevant.

Accordingly, the purpose of the study was to conduct a comparative analysis to take the minimum amount of soil together with tubers and provide the possibility of better crushing of the reservoir to facilitate separation and basic parameters while increasing operational productivity, technological reliability of the digging working body and reducing its traction resistance.

Based on the results of the research, a new rotary root and tuber harvester has been developed, due to the proposed tooth discs with cutting edges of the lugs and changing the shape of the plowshare of the root and tuber harvester to cylindric, as well as a flat moldboard surface to a rod-separating device, which provides the possibility of better crushing the layer and separating the tubers from the soil rubberized rotor tines for easier separation on the rotary soil separator with rubber tines during harvesting with a rotary root harvester.

The proposed scheme of a rotary root and tuber harvester reduces the supply of soil and the separation of tubers from the soil by rubberized rotor fingers to rotary separating working bodies and improves the separation of tubers, thereby reducing their mechanical damage, providing better storage of potatoes, reducing the number of separating devices, and increasing the productivity of the unit.

The studies carried out made it possible to determine the design parameters of the plowshare, the outer diameters of the rotor fingers and the rotors of the potato digger separator, as well as the total number of sections. At the next stages of theoretical studies, a more detailed determination of the working surface design parameters, as well as the operation modes of the fingers and rotors, was carried out.