Design And Research Of The 4U-1600 Potato Combine Harvester

The potato whose framing area has reached about ten thousand acre in China is one of the most important food crops, and its production nearly makes up a fifth of the total potato yield of the word over the same period. As a main way to gain production, the development of its industrialization has been on the right rack, but the harvesting mechanization level is still low. At present, the potato harvesting mechanization can be divided into two categories, the combining and the staging. Most of potato harvest machines are side output or having a container, while those machines are totally large and expensive, and only used in large scale farmland. The staging harvest machines are mainly potato diggers, which dig the potato out and spread it on the ground, and the potato have to been picked up and graded manually, which is time-consuming.For this reason and the application restriction of side output harvester in medium size farmland,the 4U-1600 potato combine harvester is developed.According to functional principle design, the black-box model and morphological matrix of4U-1600 potato harvester were built. In addition, the optimal scheme for the harvester structure design was achieved. The structure and working principle of the whole machine were introduced in detail. Given the potato harvesting process, and the function and structure of the whole machine, the transmission scheme was established, and the harvester structure components and power consumption were obtained. The new generation of prototype features and improvement of the parts are described. Using the solidworks software, the simulating models of the digging shovel frame, machine frame and soil-potatoes-separation plant master-slave shaft were built.Combining with the finite element analysis software of ANSYS Workbench, the assessments of the safety performance of the key parts. Overall, the above work established the theoretical foundation of the harvest design. The simulation results show that the structure design of the shovel frame and machine frame is reasonable. The strength of driving spindle and driven shaft which are made by 45# steel with the quenched and tempered treatment, is enough. The whole machine drawings are completed. The experimental machine is manufactured successfully, and the harvester’s economic benefits and market prospects are analyzed at the same time.The machine is mainly composed of profiling soil-breaking device,excavating equipment,soil-potato separating and conveying device,stalk separating device,bagging/stacking/pavingdevice, hydraulic operating mechanism, driving system,frame,wheel,and traction mechanism.Driven by a 58.8~88.2k W tractor,the harvester with the working width of 1600 mm enables a one-stop achievement of potato digging, soil-potato separating, stalk/weed/plastic film removing,potato conveying, and bagging/stalking/paving procedures. It can easily accomplish the bagging,stalking or paving of potatoes after harvest. The theoretical pure-working-time productivity of the harvester almost can reach 0.34~0.54 hm2/h. Equipped with bag filling device, hydraulic control discharge container and collecting grid, the harvester are compact. Based on different condition of farmland soil, various potato harvesting ways can be achieved through changing the potato harvester matching parts.The harvester can work well in different conditions of field soils and potato farming patterns. Especially for the potato planted in the soft-soil and no-hardening bed planting dry land with/without film covering, a superior harvesting performance is exhibited taking the bagging way for the harvester.