Conceptual design of a chickpea harvesting header

H Golpira

doi:10.5424/sjar/2013113-3728

Abstract

Interest in the development of stripper headers is growing owing to the excessive losses of combine harvesters and costs of manually harvesting for chickpeas. The design of a new concept can enhance the mechanized process for chickpea harvesting. A modified stripper platform was designed, in which passive fingers with V-shape slots removes the pods from the anchored plant. The floating platform was accompanied by a reel to complete the harvesting header. Black-box modeling was used to redesign the functional operators of the header followed by an investigation of the system behavior. Physical models of the platform and reel were modified to determine the crucial variables of the header arrangement during field trials. The slot width was fixed at 40 mm, finger length at 40 mm, keyhole diameter at 10 mm and entrance width at 6 mm; the batted reel at peripheral diameter of 700 mm and speed at 50 rpm. A tractor-mounted experimental harvester was built to evaluate the work quality of the stripper header. The performance of the prototype was tested with respect to losses and results confirmed the efficiency of the modified stripper header for chickpea harvesting. Furthermore, the header with a 1.4 m working width produced the spot work rates of 0.42 ha h-1.

Highlights

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) harvesting has remained unchanged for many centuries
The crop moisture content and friction coefficient of header-stem have an effect on harvesting performance
The platform, with forward-opening fingers, and reel are the functional operators of the chickpea harvesting header

Summary

Introduction

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) harvesting has remained unchanged for many centuries. As the available varieties do not have adequate height, most Iranian farmers harvest and handle chickpeas manually Low yield and low pod detaching force (8.3 N in 12% moisture content, w.b.); high shattering losses and high shear strength (2.8 to 9 MPa for different stem diameters) are the main challenges for chickpea harvesting equipments (Golpira et al, 2009). The crop moisture content and friction coefficient of header-stem have an effect on harvesting performance. For the black steel surface, by increasing the moisture content of chickpea grains from 7.5% to 15%t (wet basis), the value of the friction coefficient was increased. Though stripper headers had excessive losses in low yields (Tado et al, 1998), modification of the method improves the chickpea harvesting systems (Golpira & Tavakoli, 2011). Modification was achieved through modeling, elements design, machine development and field testing of the header arrangement

Design procedure

Literature review

Results and discussion