Design And Simulation Of Automatic Harvesting Machine For Spartina Alterniflora In The Intertidal Zone

Spartina alterniflora is a high-stalk plant of rice straw,which grows in the intertidal zone.Spartina alterniflora’s excessive reproductive capacity leaded to biomass spread in the intertidal zone,biological communities structure change and the ecological balance affect seriously.At present,the main measures for treating Spartina alterniflora are physical,chemical and biological technologies,but they have some problems,such as poor treating effect,secondary environmental pollution and ecological destruction.Therefore,it is imperative to research on high-efficiency and environmentally friendly Spartina alterniflora’s treatment technology and equipment.In order to treat Spartina alterniflora,an automatic harvester for Spartina alterniflora was designed and its key components was simulated.A general scheme of automatic harvester for Spartina alterniflora was proposed,according to the biological characteristics of Spartina alterniflora and the working environment of harvester,a type of double disc rectangular cutter was designed,the cutting range is 900 mm,a clamp conveying mechanism was designed,which consists of a 1282 mm high double-row finger chain and a guide plate,design of rubber caterpillar walking mechanism with 750 mm grounding length.A bracket,cutter shafts and transmission components were also designed and checked.The three-dimensional solid modeling of the harvesting mechanism,the clamp conveying mechanism,the walking mechanism and the whole harvester were built and optimized with the SolidWorks software.The static analysis of the rectangular cutter,the cutter shaft and the bracket were carried out based on Simulation module.The results showed that the maximum stresses of rectangular cutter,cutter shaft and support are 2.842 MPa,2.244 MPa and 1.443 MPa,respectively,all of them were far less than the yield limit of each component,and the working strength were enough.The kinematics simulation analysis of the harvesting mechanism was carried out with ADAMS software.The displacement,velocity and acceleration of rectangular cutter’s marker point were studied under different rotating speed of cutter and harvester forward speed.The results showed that the working state of the harvesting mechanism is relatively stable when the rotating speed of the cutter is high.The working state of the cutter is the best when the harvester forward speed is 5 km/h and the rotating speed of the cutter is 600 r/min,which is the best combination.It’s suitable for the intertidal zone with large concave and convex degree to harvest,when the harvester forward speed is 2 km/h.The harvester forward speed of 9 km/h is suitable for walking fast in the intertidal zone.In this paper,the overall technical scheme of automatic harvesting has been demonstrated for Spartina alterniflora,the structure of harvester was designed and harvesting mechanism was simulated,then reasonable structure of Spartina alterniflora harvester has been determined,the forward speed of harvester and the rotating speed of cutter were matched.The results provide a reference for the research and application of automatic harvesting technology of Spartina alterniflora.