Development of Universal Pick-Up Chopper for Harvesting of Chopped Hay and Haylage

摘要

To implement the proposed technology for chopped hay and haylage harvesting, the universal pick-up chopper equipped with a hammer-knife working elements and a new picking mechanism without a treadmill has been developed. The use of the technology for harvesting of chopped coarse forage provides a reduction in specific operating costs by 2.45 times compared with the technology for harvesting of pressed forage. The goal of the research is the development and implementation of the proposed technology and universal pick-up chopper which reduces operating costs, improves the quality of chopped coarse forage. To theoretically justify the picking up process with a picking mechanism without a treadmill, the methods of theoretical mechanics were applied. In order to determine the optimal parameters of the pick-up chopper, one-factor experimental researches were used. As a result of theoretical studies, analytical expressions were obtained for determining the forces acting on the forage when lifting it up with the fingers of the pick-up. The values of the resultant forces were determined and the possibility of operating the mechanism without disturbing the technological process of selecting coarse forage was justified. All this proves the reliability of the obtained analytical expressions. As a result of experimental researches and laboratory-field research tests we determined that the universal pick-up chopper, equipped with a new picking mechanism with hammer-knife working elements, provides harvesting of chopped hay with a capacity of 9.0-9.5 t/h and haylage with a capacity of 5.83-7.56 t/h.