Development and experiment of 4LT-A staggered-dig sugar beer combine

Abstract: Sugar beet was the most important source of sugar in the sugar industry, with the sugar amounting to about 17% of China's total sugar production. As a seasonal operation, sugar beet harvesting in China was still mainly manual work, having the problems of high labor intensity, low efficiency, great harvest losses and huge occupation of farming and so on, which constrained the further development of the sugar beet industry. Mechanized harvesting was the inevitable development trend of sugar beet harvest. Beet harvest mechanization development had lagged in our country for a long time. And we were lack of a thorough system research about sugar beet harvest mechanization technology, especially the advanced combine technology. The current domestic sugar beet harvesters were basically simple sectional operating machinery. Sugar beet combine harvesters were mainly imported from abroad, having high automation and intelligence degree and advanced performance. But imported machines had the problems of poor adaptability and high prices. The domestic beet combines were still in the prototype development stage, having a great gap with the advanced foreign technology. In order to improve the mechanization level and reduce the costs of sugar beet harvest machine, a staggered-dig sugar beet combine was developed, fully digesting and absorbing advanced technology, combined with the sugar beet grain planting scale, economic conditions, and the present situation of domestic machinery manufacturing level. The overall structure includes traction frame, row detection mechanism, round coulter, copying cut top institution, digging and conveying institution, side of threshing mechanism, walking system, cage type rotary lifting device, conveying equipment, main frame, stock bin, top conveyer and so on. The sugar beet combine adopted the key technologies such as top contour cutting, auto-follow row system, hydraulic technology, sensor signal acquisition technology and microprocessor control technology. While working, the combine harvester was dragged forward by tractor, copying cut top institution and sides of threshing mechanism finished cut the top and hit the leaf. Row detection mechanism detects the position of the ridge top beetroot block, converts the offsets of excavation forward locus to angle quantity, and then sends to the offset angle acquisition sensor. The offset angle acquisition sensor converts angle information to digital signal, and sends it to the controller. Controller handles angle signal and outputs a control signal for the solenoid valve, through the control software analysis, open hydraulic cylinder drive oil line. The hydraulic cylinder drives the traction biasing mechanism, adjusting the digging position. The adjacent inter-row twining stem and leaf were cut off by round coulter in time, guaranteeing the smoothness of mining harvest. Digging and conveying institution dug the beet root out, and then were delivered into the stock bin by cage type rotary lifting device. The results of Experiments showed that the harvester operating smoothly and reliably, the root impurity rate was less than 2%, the root fracture rate was less than 3.5%, the loss rate of beet root was less than 4%, and the toppers pass rate was greater than 85%. All indicators had reached the national standard, in line with the requirements of beet harvest. The study of auto-follow row technology, top contour cutting technology, and low damage mining technology can provide effective reference for the independent research and development of sugar beet harvesting machinery.