Interaction of vehicles with the grain pre-treatment point

Abstract

The ways of increasing efficiency of the harvesting and transport system for grain crops harvesting through the use of reserve platforms for unloading line-haul trains and dump trailers at a grain pre-treatment point are determined. The study was carried out in agricultural enterprises of the forest-steppe zone of Novosibirsk region during three harvesting periods 2017–2019. Specific features of work of the harvesting and transport system were taken into account, such as the remoteness of fields, the turn-around time of vehicles, the number of harvesting machines in the unit, and the crop harvested. The analysis of the results of theoretical and experimental studies of the interaction of vehicles and a grain pre-treatment point as subsystems of the harvesting and transport system shows that the operations of weighing, paperwork and unloading of vehicles are conditioned by the unproductive waste of working shift time, which leads to downtime of expensive highperformance harvesting machines. The dependence analysis of downtime ratio of vehicles at unloading on the throughput of the grain pre-treatment point shows that idle time of vehicles can reach up to 38% of the working shift time, according to estimated data, and up to 45%, according to experimental data. It is established that in the operation of a grain pretreatment point as a subsystem of a complex harvesting and transport system, there are time reserves for a positive effect on the system performance by searching for alternative options to service vehicles. Experimental studies of grain harvesting have shown that with a grain flow exceeding productivity of a grain pre-treatment point, it is necessary to organize reserve platforms at threshing sites to reduce the time for unloading vehicles. The use of reserve platforms can reduce the downtime of high-performance harvesting machines by 5-9%.