Design and experiment of maize kernel loss monitoring system based on signal interval duration

Abstract

Maize is one of the world’s major food crops, in the process of mechanized maize harvesting, the irrational setting of the harvester’s working parameters will cause excessive kernel loss, which will have a bad impact on the quality and quantity of the maize crop yield. Real-time monitoring of loss during harvesting is the basis for dynamic adjustment of working parameters. In order to obtain the amount of kernel loss during the harvesting process and provide real-time feedback to the operator on the current kernel loss data, so that can adjust the working parameters in time to reduce the subsequent yield loss, this study proposed a real-time kernel loss monitoring system applicable to maize crops. Aiming at the limitations of the traditional monitoring system in terms of accuracy, the signal processing circuit of the monitoring sensor was improved and a loss kernel counting algorithm based on signal interval duration was proposed, which corrected the monitoring error of the traditional measurement method in the environment of high-frequency material impact. Finally, the performance of the designed monitoring system was verified under different working environments, and the results show that the monitoring system has good performance and the monitoring accuracy can reach more than 92% under different kernel flow rates and different sensor installation positions. In addition, the monitoring system has high adaptability when it comes to kernels with different moisture contents, and the accuracy of identifying lost kernels in mixtures can reach 95%. Compared with the traditional monitoring system, the system proposed in this study has higher monitoring accuracy.The research results of this paper are of great significance to the intelligent control system of maize combine harvester, and provide technical support for real-time regulation of working parameters based on kernel loss, so as to reduce grain loss and ensure grain yield safety.