LABORATORY RESEARCH RESULTS OF ONION SEPARATION ON A BAR ELEVATOR WITH AN ADJUSTABLE TILT ANGLE

Abstract

Existing machines for harvesting root crops and onions do not provide qualitative indicators of root crops pile separation, which leads to a violation of agrotechnical requirements when harvesting them [1, 2]. It is necessary to search for new solutions to increase the quality indicators of root crop separation, namely to increase the completeness of separation and reduce damage. The article presents the design of the onion set harvesting machine, equipped with a bar elevator with an asymmetric arrangement of shakers. We described the methodology and results of laboratory studies to determine the quality indicators of heap onion sets separation on an experimental bar elevator. The results of laboratory tests of the onion set harvesting machine equipped with a bar elevator with an adjustable blade angle showed a high-quality performance of separation process at optimal values of parameters: translational speed of the bar elevator blade vEL = 1.55 ... 1.68 m s, the supply of onions heap Qb?- 19.7 ... 27.1 kg s and inclination angle of the blade bar elevator is in the range аг= 15.1... 21.9 degrees. The use of a bar elevator with an adjustable angle of inclination of the blade allows to increase the completeness of onion sets separation by 20%, and reduce damage to the bulbs by 11%.