Development and prototype trial of digging-pulling style cassava harvester

Aim at the complexity of cassava tuber distributing in the soil, in order to harvest cassava tuber from different soils with a variety of hard levels, referencing the basic principles and structure of potatoes, garlic, sweet potatoes and other root crops harvesting machinery, a kind of digging-pulling style cassava harvester was developed based on cassava's biological and physical characteristics, which can complete tuber's digging, transportation, separation and other work simultaneously. The digging shovel, clamping conveyor and power transmission mechanism were designed and the key parameters were determined. The key parameters of the grizzly bar-type shovel is shovel's plane angle of on more 20°, the shovel's length of is 550 mm and shovel's width is 1000 mm. The total transmission ratio is 2.29, gearbox's transmission ratio is 2. The gearbox output shaft speed is 500 r/min. The chain transmission ratio is 1.15, and output speed is 435 r/min. The digging-pulling cassava harvester should be used with medium-sized tractor. Through the trial of the prototype and field test, the results showed that digging-pulling cassava harvester runs smoothly, and reaches the combination of digging and pulling to harvest cassava.