Comparative study of the force action of harvester work tools on potato tubers

Abstract

The quality of the separation of root crops, onions and potatoes is known to primarily depend on the cultivation conditions. As a rule, these cultures are cultivated in mechanically light soils in order to improve the quality of separation, as well as to reduce the traction resistance of the harvester when extracting the root crops from the soil. When harvesting the root crops, it is very important to maintain the soil in a loose (light) state to improve the quality of the separation. Due to the fact that in digging up the root crops, there is a joint flow of strong soil lumps to the separating working bodies, which are difficult to separate on the slit working bodies of the harvester, which increases damage to the root crops when interacting with the soil lumps, the commercial quality of the products is subsequently deteriorated. The existing potato harvesters damage the commercial products as a result of the interaction of the potato tubers with each other, with the working bodies and with the soil lumps. However, the greatest percentage of damage to potato tubers occurs as a result of their interaction with the working bodies of the harvester. Field studies were conducted to determine the places of the greatest impact of the individual working bodies of the potato harvesters and to carry out subsequent actions for the elimination of these negative impacts in the design of the harvesters. This article presents a methodology for conducting field studies on the assessment of the impact of the working bodies on the scale of damage to potato tubers when harvesting. The results of the comparative studies of the impact of the working bodies of modern potato harvesters, which damage the potato tubers as a result of the interaction with them are presented. We have determined that the greatest scale of impact on the potato tubers during the mechanised harvesting is observed as the transition from the main elevator to the secondary separation devices takes place, irrespective of the design and technological scheme of the harvester, and reaches its minimum value from 6.5 N for the Bolko harvester to 21 N for the AVR-Spirit-6200 harvester.