Experimental Study on Sugarcane Top Chopper

Highlights This article focuses on the sugarcane top chopper. The influence of three factors on the experimental indexes was studied. The optimal parameters combination of working performance was obtained. Abstract. In the process of sugarcane harvesting, sugarcane tops are cut off by the chopper and directly thrown into the field. A small percentage of sugarcane tops are picked and collected to feed livestock. Therefore, it is meaningful to develop an effective sugarcane top chopper which is used to harvest sugarcane tops before harvesting sugarcane stalk harvesting. In this study, a sugarcane top chopping platform was fabricated to investigate critical parameters such as chopping speed (CS), top feeding speed (FS), and cutting drum gap (DG) on the machine performance. In evaluating the sugarcane top chopper, three single factor experiment and one orthogonal experiment were carried out. The single factor test was used to examine the effect of CS, FS and DG on the chopping performance of the machine. According to orthogonal test, the comprehensive influence order was determined: cutting drum gap > chopping speed > top feeding speed. The optimal parameters combination for good working performance of the machine was obtained: chopping speed was 750 rpm, top feeding speed was 1.2 m·s-1, and cutting drum gap was 20 mm. The relationships between the chopping performance and the three critical factors were examined and analyzed to provide theoretical basis for the development of a sugarcane top chopper.