Theoretical investigation of aggregation of top removal machine frontally mounted on wheeled tractor

Abstract

At present the sugar beet top removal process is carried out without extraction of the beets from the soil, and it is implemented in two stages: at first, complete removal of the basic amount of the green mass without using a contour follower, followed by individual additional cleaning of the root crop heads from the top (leaf) residues. The use of top removal machines as independent harvesting moduli allows their aggregation with various types of row-crop tractors, which causes a necessity to determine conformity of this or other top removal machine with the traction and energy parameters in order to ensure high efficiency of using the proposed machine and tractor aggregates. The conducted investigations made it possible to develop a mathematical model for the justification and selection of optimal parameters of the machine and tractor aggregates composed of a tractor and a frontally mounted (frontal) top removal machine. In this connection, dependencies of the operating speed of the movement of a particular harvesting aggregate and its efficiency depending on the specific resistance of the top removal machine were determined in an analytical way. The numerical calculations performed on the PC provided a possibility to determine the optimal parameters of the mentioned aggregates by the efficiency and energy intensity criteria.