Abstract
In India, most of the maize combine harvester currently being used employs snap roll type header. This type of header is costly, dependent on row spacing of maize crop and causes losses at headlands during turning. Moreover owing to its heavy weight its frequent lifting and downing during harvesting season causes hydraulic leakages in certain sections of combine. Therefore to overcome these problems a new light weight cutter bar Maize header is developed and evaluated for maize crop. The performance evaluation of the cutter bar type maize header is done in a dislodged and a partially lodged (30-40%) maize crop. For lodged crops, the header losses varied from 19.18-26.71% and for dislodged crops it was varied from 5.29-10.15% respectively. The cylinder losses for dislodged crop varied from 2.70-2.86% and for lodged crop it varied from 0.85-2.04%. The mean cleaning efficiency for lodged and dislodged maize crop was found as 88.87% and 90.58% respectively. The grain damage for lodged and dislodged crop was observed as 8.31% and 5.94% respectively. The trash content for lodged and dislodged crop was 2.75 and 3.45% respectively. The performance of snap roll and cutter bar was also done. Total losses with snap roll header were higher as 15.06% and lower for cutter bar as 10.85%. The brokens were higher for cutter bar as 5.94 and lower for snap roll as 3.45%. The trash content was 3.45% for cutter bar header and 2.24% for snap roll header. The total energy input in snap roll header, cutter bar maize header and maize dehusker cum sheller were 2360.05, 1970.90 and 3770.48 MJ/ha respectively.The cost of operatin with cutter bar maize header, snap roll maize header and maize dehusker cum sheller were 53.62 $/ha, 68.73$/ha 187.32 $/ha respectively.
Highlights
Losses while harvesting can be separated into three categories
Though the cutter bar type maize header was adjusted to nearly horizontal position, yet the lodged crop was not picked completely
Total losses with snap roll header were higher as 15.06% and lower for cutter bar as 10.85%
Summary
Losses while harvesting can be separated into three categories. Gathering losses that occur at the front of the combine consist of ears (missed or dropped by corn head) and kernels (shelled by the stalk rolls on the corn head). Threshing and separating losses are found on the ground behind the combine. Threshing losses are damaged kernels in the tank and kernels attached to the cobs that were not shelled by the combine rotor or cylinder. Proper operation of the reel is critical to minimize header losses that include shatter losses and cutter bar losses. Both these losses are affected by cutter bar height, reel position with respect to the cutter bar, and reel peripheral speed, which is recommended to be about 25-50% faster than the forward speed of the combine (Behroozi-Lar & Mobli, 2006). The header loss depends on reel rotational speed, ground speed and cutting bar knives. Crops with low height couldn’t be cut by a cutter, as the seeds drop when they come in contact with the reel. Behroozi-Lar (1995) showed that the reel should be placed in 15-25 cm above the jas.ccsenet.org
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