A comb-brushing-type green soybean pod harvesting equipment: Design and experiment

Abstract

To solve the problem of low efficiency of manual harvesting of green soybeans and lack of adaptable harvesters, in this study, a brushing-type green soybean harvester was designed. The comb-brushing type green soybean pod harvesting equipment is composed of a front-mounted separation drum, a full-width material delivery mechanism, a negative pressure cleaning system, and a stalk-pod separation system. Based on the operation requirements of the front-mounted brushing-type detachment drum, the drum parameters, parameters of comb arrangement, and structural parameters of the comb, the force analysis in detachment was performed. By taking the pod detachment rate and damage rate as the response indexes, the rotational speed of the drum, the travel speed of the device, and teeth distance as influencing factors, a three-factor five-level orthogonal rotary combination test was carried out by the software Design-Expert. By establishing mathematical regression models for various influencing factors and evaluation indicators, conducting variance analysis and significance analysis on the response indicators of each factor, the optimal parameters were obtained at a rotational speed of teeth of 397.36 rpm/min, minimum axial teeth distance of 4.8 mm and travel speed of the device of 0.5 m/s. Field test results showed that, under the optimal parameter combination, the pod detachment rate was 94%, the damage rate was 3.04%, the harvesting efficiency was greater than 0.187 hm2/h, and impurity content was less than 7.8%, all of which met the design and usage requirements. The research results can provide a reference for the design of soybean harvesters.

STUDY ON SINGLE-BRANCH COMBING OF Cerasus humilis

“…The unloading device in this study refers to the design of a wild blueberry picking head and is arranged inside the picking head (Farooque et al, 2014). In contrast, in the combing of chrysanthemums and rare Soybean pods, a higher rotation speed is required to obtain enough centrifugal force to leave the combing teeth (Ehlert et al, 2014;Zhao et al, 2023), because they have different mechanical properties from Cerasus humilis.…”

“…During this process, the fruit may be cracked and scratched by branches (Du et al, 2020). As a cantilever structure, comb teeth may be deformed and lose their working ability under the reaction of branches (Zhao et al, 2023). It is of great significance to study the combing process of a single fruit-bearing branch to understand the harvest of the whole fruit tree.…”