Engineering and Economic Evaluation of a Prototype Fabricated for Harvesting Sugarcane

摘要

A sugarcane harvester prototype was fabricated and evaluated to save time, labor, and har-vesting expenses, which are included in production costs. The single-row harvester prototype fitsthe functional needs of the physical qualities of sugarcane and was designed to be installed on atractor. One serrated edge cutter disc, three forward speeds, and three cutter disc speeds were usedto evaluate the performance of the fabricated sugarcane harvester. The results of the technical evalua-tion showed that the average forward speed was 5 km h−1, and the average cutter disc speed was2000 rpm by a cutter disc with a serrated edge produced the ideal sugarcane harvesting parameters.The actual field capacity, the power required and the specific energy requirements, were determined.Despite that economic evaluation empathies that the combination of 3.5 km h−1 forward speed and a1000 rpm cutting speed also achieved the highest benefits ($115.12/ha).