LONGITUDINAL COMPRESSING AND SHEARING PROPERTIES OF SILAGE CORN STALK IN NORTH CHINA PLAIN

During silage harvesting, silage corn stalk is compressed by a feeding device and fed into the shearing device to be sheared into qualified segments to make silage fermentation easier. To optimize the working quality of the existing silage harvester and reduce energy consumption, it’s necessary to make a comprehensive analysis of the longitudinal compressing and shearing properties of the silage corn stalks and get a reliable shearing model. According to the different structural properties of the silage corn stalks, the main factors affecting the shearing energy consumption and their levels were obtained by compressing and shearing tests on internodes and nodes in this paper. The results of three-level and three-factor experiments showed that the overall shearing energy consumption for nodes was much higher than that for internodes. Compressing the silage corn stalk to some extent before shearing at the loading direction of 0° and lower shearing speed was beneficial to saving energy during the process of shearing off the silage corn stalk. The reduced energy requirements of the silage corn stalk could be exploited advantageously to present new reference for the feeding and cutting mechanisms of silage harvester. The research results can provide a reference for silage corn harvesting.