Calculation of the change in raw cotton mass when passing through the working chamber of the harvester

Abstract

Abstract The motion of the mass of a cotton plant through the working area formed by two parallel spindles on paired drums refers to the class of problems on the material passage through a narrowing area. The article is devoted to modeling the interaction process between the spindle apparatus and the cotton plant to determine the change in the mass of the cotton product (raw cotton) with plant elements when passing through the working area of the harvesting apparatus. According to this model, a cotton plant is modeled as a continuous medium with the simplest mechanical property characterizing the process of compression and tension of the cotton mass. To perform numerical calculations, classical methods of modeling and probabilistic analysis of technological processes of interaction between cotton and the spindles of a harvesting machine were used. On the basis of numerical calculations, in the MathCAD 15 programming environment graphs were plotted that describe the patterns of changes in the cotton mass during the contact of cotton with the spindles of the cotton harvester.