Improving the design of a root crop harvester in order to increase the sustainability of agriculture

Abstract

Abstract Cultivating agricultural crops assumes the use of mechanical means to accelerate the performance of technical operations in a reasonable agrotechnical amount of time. Vegetable growing is one of the industries where it is necessary to use modern automated and robotized machinery. Technologies and technical means have been considered which are used in enterprises engaged in cultivating tuberous roots at the moment and their disadvantages have been revealed. As a result, a technology of harvesting tuberous roots has been proposed, which is based on the use of the combine-harvester developed. The design solutions of the combine-harvester have been considered, which allow to solve the problem of the vegetable growers, and the technical process of harvesting tuberous roots has been described. The substantiation of a drum cutter bar has been presented and the coefficient of chaff feed to the transporter, the traction force of the conveyor motion and the power at the drive of the chain slatted conveyors have been determined. As a result of the researches carried out, it was determined that the use of the combine-harvester for tuberous roots shall allow to increase the level of mechanization and the productivity at enterprises, which are engaged in cultivating vegetable crops.