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This paper concerns the results of changes in soil compaction after the passages of combine harvester. The research was done on the maize-stubble; the soil was the mold formed in the sand. The measured parameter was a penetration of resistance in range of depth 0–60 cm. The measurements were done in the ruts after the passages the front and rear wheel of combine harvester. During the experiment two levels of vertical load of wheels were applied – these levels were dependent on filling of grain tank of harvester. Moreover, the influence of the lateral tilt of harvester on the soil compaction was analyzed (the harvester was equipped with the leveling system which allowed to obtain the tilt). The obtained results shows that the increase in vertical load caused greater compaction in ruts. Furthermore, it was found that the passage of tilted harvester caused lower compaction than the harvester without tilt.

The industrial need for safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) increased over the last decade due to its potential use as food colorant. Safflower is mainly cultivated in Asia for its use as floret. In Germany, an economically attractive cultivation for floret use would require a mechanization of harvest. In order to develop a mechanical harvesting system, field experiments were conducted at the experimental station Ihinger Hof of the University Hohenheim in 2017 and 2018. Safflower was harvested with a combine harvester to obtain the florets. Two safflower (i) cultivars were harvested with (ii) three threshing parameter settings on (iii) five harvest dates to evaluate threshed floret yield, dry matter and carthamidin content, and carthamidin yield. Results showed that the maximum threshed floret yield was achieved at the latest harvest date (784.78–1141.76 kg ha−1), while the highest carthamidin contents were observed depending on cultivar on the first two harvest dates (0.53–3.14%). The decisive and resulting amount of carthamidin yield reached its maximum with the Chinese cultivar and the threshing parameter setting P3 between the fourth and fifth harvest date in 2018 (19.05–19.36 kg ha−1). Highest dry matter contents were achieved at the last harvest date (62.67–77.77%). Individual capitula weight and carthamidin content decreased with later harvest dates. Further investigations should clarify whether the individual capitula weight and carthamidin content correlate with each other or are independent of the date of harvest. This could be a decisive criterion for the selection of cultivars for harvesting florets with a combine harvester. Reduced costs of machine harvesting compared to hand harvesting will make the cultivation of safflower for the food coloring industry in Germany more attractive in the future.

The threshing gap of the thresher device for rice combine harvester has to be adjusted in real time based on different feed rates to ensure the operation efficiency in the harvesting process. However, adjusting the threshing gap by changing the position of concave grid may result in unevenness of threshing gap of the thresher device and further impact on the fluidity of material in the thresher device; in addition, it is also unavailable to adjust the threshing gap by changing the drum diameter when the rice combine harvester is in operation. In view of the above and based on axial flow threshing drum, the design of a variable-diameter threshing drum available for overall and rapid drum diameter adjustment and the research on diameter adjustment device as well as electronic control self-locking device were introduced in this study. Besides, stress analysis was implemented to the diameter adjustment device to ensure the stability of the variable-diameter threshing drum. Field experiment was implemented to identify the difference between the impacts brought to the threshing performance (grain-entrainment loss rate, damage rate, threshing efficiency, and threshing power consumption) by both methods for threshing gap adjustment. The experiment result shows that the drum adjustment method with variable-diameter drum features higher grain-entrainment loss rate, threshing efficiency, and threshing power consumption, yet stable in terms of consumption fluctuation, but a lower damage rate than their counterparts with concave adjustment method.

Technical and performance parameters of agricultural machines directly impact the operational efficiency and entire crop production. Sometimes, overestimation of technical and dimensional parameters of harvesting equipment is carried out with the intention of enhancing the operational efficiency, but this approach might turn out to negatively impact productivity due to unbalanced system design, and ultimately lead to financial losses. Therefore, a balanced preliminary estimation of technical parameters of equipment needs to be carried out before investment quantification, especially on the large capital-intensive machinery units, such as harvesting systems. In addition, availability of ready to use, simplified models for the price estimation from input technical parameters would reduce the complexity involved in this latter analysis. The current study is an attempt to provide tools to address these issues. A large dataset of combine and forage harvesters has been analyzed to investigate relevant parameter-to-parameter and parameter-to-price relations. The study of the available data allowed the determination of indicative models for the estimation of machine price, power, weight, tank capacity and working width. A significant correlation between power and price (R2 > 0.8) has been observed for two groups of harvesting machines. For combine harvesters, satisfactory correlations were found between power and weight, and power and tank capacity. A regression model for combine harvesters showed a satisfactory behavior at predicting the average working width that can be operated by a given power. On the other hand, for the forage harvesting group, the relation between these quantities has lower values; therefore, for better accuracy of the association, more sophisticated considerations should be incorporated, taking into account other parameters.

A cut-edge detection method based on machine vision was developed for obtaining the navigation path of a combine harvester. First, the Cr component in the YCbCr color model was selected as the grayscale feature factor. Then, by detecting the end of the crop row, judging the target demarcation and getting the feature points, the region of interest (ROI) was automatically gained. Subsequently, the vertical projection was applied to reduce the noise. All the points in the ROI were calculated, and a dividing point was found in each row. The hierarchical clustering method was used to extract the outliers. At last, the polynomial fitting method was used to acquire the straight or curved cut-edge. The results gained from the samples showed that the average error for locating the cut-edge was 2.84 cm. The method was capable of providing support for the automatic navigation of a combine harvester.

A machine vision system to evaluate harvested paddy grain quality during harvesting using double lighting was developed. The prototype consisted of a low-cost web camera and two lighting systems: a ring white LED for front lighting, and a flat dome white LED light for backlighting. Both lighting systems were arranged in a coaxial axis, making the system simple, compact and easy to handle. The aim of the system is to analyse the captured images and determine the amount of unwanted materials (rachis branch, grass and leaves, and stems) and damaged grain (brown and crack rice) present in the paddy as it is being harvested. In this paper, we introduce the first step in the development of the system: the design and selection of components to optimize the performance of the system to monitor harvested paddy grain quality. The idea would be to mount the system on top of the inlet channel of the grain tank of a combine harvester to provide real-time assessment of harvesting operational parameters.

Five wheat stubble management practices i.e. chopping the stubble by the chopper mounted on combine during harvest and transmitting the straw to trailer (SCDF), chopping the stubble by the chopper mounted on combine during harvest and spreading the straw to field surface (SCDS), chopping the stubble on field surface after harvest by chopper mounted on combine and transmitting the straw to trailer (SCAF), leaving the stubble on field surface (SLS) and removing the stubble left on field surface by baling (SSB) and the cutting height of combine header (10 and 20 cm) were evaluated in terms of fuel consumption and field capacity. The result of the studies showed that the cutting height of header was increased from 10 to 20 cm, the field capacity increased from 1.195 to 1.365 ha/h and the fuel consumption decreased from 54.472 to 38.859 l/ha. While the highest field capacity was determined in SLS (1.846 ha/h), SCAF and SSB treatments had the lowest field capacity (0.954 and 0.891 ha/h, respectively). Chopping the stubble by chopper mounted on combine and transmitting straw to trailer during harvest increased the fuel consumption of combine by 3.6 times.

Background and aims: High levels of noise that most operators of agricultural machinery are exposed to for a long time contribute to cause chronic fatigue and irreversible hearing loss. For this reason, occupational health and safety issues related to such machinary should be considered as a key criterion in the design of agricultural machinery and as a critical factor in the acceptance and sales of these equipment. In this study, some factors affecting the sound pressure level of two combines were evaluated. Methods: Accordingly, sound pressure level of John Deere 1055 and Sampo 3065 combine harvesters were evaluated at the operatorchr('39')s ear, 7.5 and 20 meters of the device. Measurements were performed using a microphone MP201, preamplifier MA231 and MC3022 data acquisition system. A factorial experiment that arranged as a completely randomized design with four replicates was used and data were analyzed using SPSS software version 17. Results: The results of this study indicate that different levels of the variable gear ratio, type of operation, engine speed and microphone distance was significant on sound pressure level at 1% level. The results also show that the sound pressure level at the ear position in the combines without cab is greater in comparison to other distances. Sampo and John Deere combine cabs reduce noise level to 5.67 and 9.39 dB, respectively. Conclusion: The results of this research revealed the existence of a cabin in both types of combine harvesters, had a significant impact on the reduction of noise level that the use of cab in John Deere in comparison to Sampo, reduced noise levels to a greater degree. But what is certain is that large numbers of combine harvesters that currently are used in different regions of the country are without the cabin. Regarding the use of these combine harvesters, hearing protection is absolutely essential.

A problem of selecting the controlled parameter values of the combine harvester work tools is considered. Models describing the harvesting quality factor dependencies of the external agents are analyzed. The need of a new approach to modeling the technological adjustment process of the harvester in the field which takes into account the fuzzy information on the environmental factors, its approximate character, as well as an expert method of generating information, is justified. To describe the environmental factors and the performance indices, linguistic variables are introduced, their membership functions are developed, and production rules are formulated. The fuzzy inference process is illustrated by an example of selecting the beater rate speed. A knowledgebase and an inference engine that form the expert system basis are created. The use of such a system in the field allows reducing the process downtime and crop waste. A practical implementation of the developed model is the creation of the software for the automated problem solution of the technological adjustment of the harvester in the field.

Aiming at the problem of automated control of high-level grain unloading mechanism in combine harvester, the mechanical structure, manual control process and circuit configuration of combine harvester were studied, mechanism structure and movement principle analysis of unloading grain and two degrees of freedom were carried out, and the problem of inefficiency of combine harvester was summarized. A high automated unloading system control system of combine harvester was put forward to operate logic of two-order optimization, the minimum number of position sensor system and the fool automated control algorithm design, the completion of the relevant hardware and software were designed and development, and Star 4 LZ-5. 0 Z crawler self-propelled full-feed combine harvester field test and operation comparison were done. The results indicate that the automatic unloading mechanism takes 5. 3 s, compared with the manual adjustment time reduced 4 times, increase unloading efficiency, and has unloading grain simple operation, and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real time sensing of crop yield is critical for a successful implementation of precision agriculture. Yield monitoring system is an optional component of a 55 kW multi-purpose combine harvester, developed in Korea, for both domestic and global markets, especially Asian countries where field sizes are relatively small. The aim of the present study was to fabricate and evaluate the performance of a grain flow sensor suitable to the mid-sized full-feed type combine for rice, soybean, and barley. Firstly, commercially available non-contact type sensing modules (optical, ultrasonic, laser, and microwave modules) were chosen for alternative candidates, to be further tested in a laboratory bench. Through the laboratory tests, the ultrasonic module was selected as a potential approach and the performance was improved by increasing the number of modules and their layout. Finally, the improved grain flow sensor was evaluated during field harvesting operation. Field tests with the improved grain flow sensor showed a good potential for rice (R²=0.85, RMSE=126.14 g/s), soybean (R²=0.78, RMSE=43.87 g/s), and barley (R²=0.83, RMSE=37.39 g/s). Further research would be necessary for improvement and commercialization, through various signal processing and field tests under different field and crop conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Agriculture Faculty Journal, Mustafa Kemay University / Ziraat Fakultesi Dergisi, Mustafa Kemal Universitesi is the property of Mustafa Kemal University, Faculty of Agriculture and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

New construction of working elements of combine harvester stripper header is suggested. The essence of technical solution consists in the construction alteration of stripper header fingers at the account of tine technological gap increase. The recommendations on the choice of rational kinematic operation mode of combine harvester header are developed. The improved construction allows increasing combine harvester stripping efficiency and decreasing grain material losses to 5% at harvesting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Machinery & Energetics is the property of National University of Life & Environmental Sciences of Ukraine and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Machinery & Energetics is the property of National University of Life & Environmental Sciences of Ukraine and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Weeds are mainly controlled with herbicides in intensive crop production, but this has resulted in increasing problems with herbicide-resistant weeds and public concerns about the unwanted side-effects of herbicide use. Therefore, there is a need for new alternative methods to reduce weed problems. One way to reduce weed infestation could be to collect or kill weed seeds produced in the growing season. Crop and weeds are harvested simultaneously with the combine harvester, but most of the weed seeds are returned with the chaff to the field creating new problems in future growing seasons. During the harvesting process, the harvester produces heat. Under normal harvest conditions, the exhaust gas temperature measured directly behind the turbocharger of the engine of a combine harvester may reach between 400 °C and 480 °C depending of the size of the engine. These high temperatures indicate that there is a potential for developing a system which perhaps could be utilized to kill or damage the weeds seeds. We investigate how much heat is needed to damage weed seeds significantly and focuses on the germination patterns over time in response to these treatments. We investigated if heat treatment of weed seeds could kill the seeds or reduce seed vigour or kill the seeds before they are returned to the field. The aim is to avoid harvested viable weed seeds being added to the soil seed bank. During the threshing and cleaning process in the combine harvester, most weed seeds and chaff are separated from the crop grains. After this separation, we imagine that the weed seeds could be exposed to a high temperature before they are returned to the field. Seeds of nine common weed species were treated with temperatures of 50 °C, 100 °C, 150 °C, 200 °C, and 250 °C for 0, 2, 5, 10, and 20 s, respectively. Afterwards, the seeds were germinated for fourteen days. Seeds were differently affected by the heat treatments. We found that 50 °C and 100 °C was insufficient to harm the seeds of all species significantly at all durations. Heating with a temperature of 50 °C and 100 °C showed a slight tendency to break the dormancy of Alopecurus myosuroides Huds. and Papaver rhoeas L., but the results were not statistically significant. Seeds treated with 150 °C gave varying results depending on the duration and the weed species. The germination of A. myosuroides was significantly repressed when seeds were exposed to 250 °C for 5 s. Most species were significantly damaged when they were exposed to 250 °C for more than 10 s. Our results showed that there is a potential to explore how the waste heat energy produced by combine harvesters can be exploited to either kill or reduce the vigour of weed seeds before they are returned to the field with the chaff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) for industrial purposes belongs to field crops that has recently started to grow in Slovenia again. Due to different growing potentials of the field the plant is adequately rich in seeds and leaves, whereas, when grows on smaller fields, the harvest required a big challenge. The existing methods of harvesting cereals are not suitable for harvesting of hemp stems. Owing to special properties of the plant structure, it is necessary to consider very demanding conditions of harvesting with the existing machinery. Primarily, it is required to evaluate the relevant design- and technology-related parameters of machinery in order not to encounter problems during harvesting. In this study, it was confirmed that the cutting height and other combine processing parameters determine the success of the harvest without congestion. The article presents the modifications that were made to the combine for harvesting grain, so the harvest of industrial hemp was made at most successful way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents researches on the wear resistance of the blades integrated in the combine cutter for the harvesting of agricultural plants. The wear of the combine cutters causes production losses at harvesting both during operation and stopping machines to change the blades. Experimental determination of wear was made for blades on cutting attachment of three types of combines studied. The parameters determined in the wear study were the hardness, mass and roughness of both the new blades and the blades used for 100 hours of harvest operation. The analysis of the data on the degree of wear of the blades both quantitatively by determining the mass and qualitatively by studying the roughness of the used surfaces under identical conditions of operation, presents differential losses for the three combines that correlate with the blade hardness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a study of the influence of the constructive parameters of the blades on the cutting machines from the harvesters during the cutting process. The research focuses on the angle of sharpening of the cutting edges of the blades and the angle of inclination of the stalk during the cutting process. The blades used in the experiment have smooth and jagged cutting edges with a usual angle of 20° and modified angles of 10° and 15°. The tests were carried out using maize stalks (Zea mays) with tilt angles of 45° and 90°. The diagrams of variation of force, displacement and mechanical work during the cutting of maize stalks are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A combine harvester manufacturing quality grading method is proposed. • A combine harvester manufacturing quality evaluation framework is established. • Compactness and separation can work in evaluating unsupervised anomaly detection. • LOF demonstrates excellent performance in multivariate anomaly detection. Manufacturing quality tests mainly depend on manual methods, and most quality evaluations rely on the quality evaluation intervals, which lacks quantitative means for grading. As a consequence, it is challenging for the test process to find hidden quality problems early. In this paper, we conduct research on the test and grading method for combine harvester manufacturing quality and propose a hybrid method of "end-of-line test & secondary grading", including a LabVIEW®-based test system and LOF (Local Outlier Factor)-based secondary grading method. The developed test system collects data from multiple working systems in a combine harvester and constructs the dataset. We further investigate eight unsupervised anomaly detection methods for grading harvester quality. Taking the evaluation indices of intracluster compactness (CP), intercluster separation (SP), and anomaly hit amount, we comprehensively assess these methods for different system performances in the harvester. The assessment results validate the LOF as being better among the eight anomaly detection methods, which obtains smaller CP integral values of 241.49, 433.51, and 309.93 and larger SP integral values of 383.82, 565.07, and 543.80 for the electrical system, hydraulic system, and braking performance datasets, respectively. Meanwhile, the LOF also obtains a good anomaly hit amount. Finally, the end-of-line test system integrates the advanced LOF-based grading method to quantitatively assess the harvester performance and identify potential quality-violated parts over time. The developed system proposes a solution for the automation and optimization demand in agricultural machinery manufacturing evaluation and provides technical guidance for product operation and maintenance management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thorough investigation of both grain threshing and grain separating processes is a crucial consideration for effective structural design and variable optimization of the tangential flow threshing cylinder and longitudinal axial flow threshing cylinder composite units (TLFC unit) of small and medium-sized (SME) combine harvesters. The objective of this paper was to obtain the structural variables of a TLFC unit by theoretical modeling and experimentation on a tangential flow threshing cylinder unit (TFC unit) and longitudinal axial flow threshing cylinder unit (LFC unit). Threshing and separation equations for five types of threshing teeth (knife bar, trapezoidal tooth, spike tooth, rasp bar, and rectangular bar), were obtained using probability theory. Results demonstrate that the threshing and separation capacity of the knife bar TFC unit was stronger than the other threshing teeth. The length of the LFC unit was divided into four sections, with helical blades on the first section (0-0.17 m), the spike tooth on the second section (0.17-1.48 m), the trapezoidal tooth on the third section (1.48-2.91 m), and the discharge plate on the fourth section (2.91-3.35 m). Test results showed an un-threshed grain rate of 0.243%, un-separated grain rate of 0.346%, and broken grain rate of 0.184%. Evidenced by these results, threshing and separation performance is significantly improved by analyzing and optimizing the structure and variables of a TLFC unit. The results of this research can be used to successfully design the TLFC unit of small and medium-sized (SME) combine harvesters.

Rice is a main food for Iranian people and has an important role in providing food security. Regarding the population growth, increase of rice production and reduction of losses have special importance in prevention of rice import. Rice losses in the harvest stage are the highest through the whole production period of this crop and hence the reduction of these losses is necessary. Provision of this purpose depends on on-time harvesting and separation of grains from chaff with the least grain losses, and choosing a suitable harvesting method. The choice of harvesting method depends on various factors in each region; thus, different harvest methods in each region must be compared while conducted in the same conditions. In order to recommend the beast harvest method in Shivan-Chardavol region, three harvesting methods (manually, rice-specific combine harvester and conventional cereals combine harvester) were considered as three experimental treatments and four different parts of this region considered as experimental blocks. The experimental design was randomized complete block design. This study was carried out on Anbarboo variety and the measured factors were: effective farm capacity, percent of total losses, percent of harvesting losses, number of workers and harvesting cost. The results of this study indicated that the total difference of factors was significant at the 1% error level among all treatments. The effective farm capacity in harvesting by cereals combine harvester was more than other treatments. The lowest percent of loss was observed for harvesting by rice-specific combine harvester (2.32%) and the highest percent of loss was obtained for cereals combine harvester (3.816%). The manual harvesting method had the highest harvesting cost and the lowest cost was found to be associated with the rice specific combine harvester. Therefore, from the results of this study, the use of this combine harvester is recommended for rice harvesting in this region.