STUDY OF POWER CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DIGGING SHARE OF A MACHINE FOR ROOT-CROP AND ONION HARVESTING

The authors have conducted studies to determine the traction efforts of the digging share of a machine for harvesting root crops and onions based on its technological parameters - speed and digging depth. The paper presents a design scheme and general view of the offered laboratory installation for determining the supply of a heap of onion sets to the digging share. The paper descries a methodology for conducting traction studies of the digging share of an onion harvesting machine and describes the operating principle of the digging tool of a harvesting machine, which ensures high-quality harvesting of root crops and onions with minimal energy consumption. As a result of the studies, the response function values of the digging share’s tractive effort have been obtained taking into account the varying speed and digging depth. When processing the results of a two-factor experiment, a first-order regression equation was obtained to describe the relationship between the traction resistance of the digging share of a machine for harvesting root crops and onions and its technological parameters RП = f(vП, h), and the main statistical characteristics of the experiment. It has been established that in order to ensure the quality of bulb extraction from the soil (minimal damage and loss of bulbs) as well as high performance of the harvesting machine, the digging share speed should amount to 0.8...1.2 m/s and the digging depth should equal 3...5 cm.