Testing the technology of preliminary separation of light components of the heap in the stripping adapter

Abstract

The maximum output capacity of a combine harvester with a stripping adapter may only be achieved if the combine harvester is adapted to the specifics of crop stripping technology. One stage of this adaptation involves preliminary separation of light components of the grain heap to relieve the load on the combine cleaning system. The process of separating light impurities in the stripping adapter was studied using louvered screens mounted on the rear wall of the stripping adapter. The proportion of separated light components of the grain heap was selected as an optimization parameter. The proportion of removed grain was also monitored. The angle of the louvered screen was determined as a factor. The experiment was conducted under the conditions typical for the zone. The Ameliya winter wheat variety was harvested. The grain moisture content was 15%. The wheat yield amounted to 5.2 t ha. As part of the statistical processing of the experimental results, the homogeneity of variances was tested using the Cochran’s test. The variances were found to be homogeneous. The experiment revealed that the proportion of light-weight components in the heap varied from 8.5 to 15.1%, while the proportion of removed grain varied from 0.11 to 0.71%. The most acceptable results were achieved with a 75° louver plate inclination. The proportion of removed light-weight components in the heap was 8.5% with 0.11% grain removal proportion. The results of the experiments and further work to optimize the louver parameters provide the basis for increasing the proportion of removed light-weight components in the heap to 15% while maintaining an acceptable proportion of removed grain.