Abstract
Grain separation losses is a key parameter to weigh the performance of combine harvesters, and also a dominant factor for automatically adjusting their major working parameters. The traditional separation losses monitoring method mainly rely on manual efforts, which require a high labor intensity. With recent advancements in sensor technology, electronics and computational processing power, this paper presents an indirect method for monitoring grain separation losses in tangential-axial combine harvesters in real-time. Firstly, we developed a mathematical monitoring model based on detailed comparative data analysis of different feeding quantities. Then, we developed a grain impact piezoelectric sensor utilizing a YT-5 piezoelectric ceramic as the sensing element, and a signal process circuit designed according to differences in voltage amplitude and rise time of collision signals. To improve the sensor performance, theoretical analysis was performed from a structural vibration point of view, and the optimal sensor structural has been selected. Grain collide experiments have shown that the sensor performance was greatly improved. Finally, we installed the sensor on a tangential-longitudinal axial combine harvester, and grain separation losses monitoring experiments were carried out in North China, which results have shown that the monitoring method was feasible, and the biggest measurement relative error was 4.63% when harvesting rice.
Highlights
Combine harvesters have been playing an increasingly important role in modern agricultural production in recent years, and their working process can be divided into the following operations: cutting of the crop and recovering grains from the field; separating grains from the greater crop parts such as straw; separating grains from material-other-than-grain (MOG); and collecting cleaned grains into a tank for temporary storage
As long as we know x0, y0, a and b, the ratio between the amount of grains in the monitoring area and total grain losses could be calculated according to the Equation (12), and the sensor measured values converted into total separation losses can monitor the grain separation losses in real time
To monitor separation losses in real time, a method for monitoring grain separation losses was proposed in this paper
Summary
Combine harvesters have been playing an increasingly important role in modern agricultural production in recent years, and their working process can be divided into the following operations: cutting of the crop and recovering grains from the field; separating grains from the greater crop parts such as straw; separating grains from material-other-than-grain (MOG); and collecting cleaned grains into a tank for temporary storage. Due to such a low grain weight, the collision signals were relatively weak, while the vibrations generated by the cleaning sieve, threshing drums, header and engine were so large that they had a significant influence on the accuracy of the sensor, and this resulted in large measurement errors, so there is an urgent need to develop a new sensor which can accurately monitor the grain collisions of rice grains in real time with vibration interference. The innovation and contributions of this paper can be summarized in the following two aspects: (1) we have established a proper and highly robust mathematical model for monitoring grain separation losses; (2) we have upgraded the sensitivity and detection speed of the grain impact sensor though structure optimization to discriminate between full rice grains and MOG with a relative high accuracy under vibration interference
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