Designing a helical knife for a shredding drum using a sweep surface

The object of this paper is a helical blade in a shredding drum from a sweep surface. Such drums are used in harvesters for crushing plant mass. If the flat blades are installed on the drum, cutting of the plant mass occurs simultaneously along the entire length of the blade. This could cause a pulsating dynamic load. If a flat knife with a straight blade is installed at an angle to the axis of the drum, then the distances from it to the points of the blade will be different, as well as the cutting conditions along the blade. The elliptical shape enables the same distance from the axis of rotation to the points of the blade, but this does not solve the problem. Many short flat knives with a straight blade can be mounted on the drum, placing them in such a way that the time between the individual knives is minimized. However, all these disadvantages can be eliminated by a helical knife with a blade in the form of a helical line. The design of a helical knife from an unfolding helicoid has been considered. In differential geometry, the bending of unfolded surfaces of zero thickness is considered. Bending of the workpiece into a finished product occurs with minimal plastic deformations, the magnitude of which depends on the thickness of the workpiece sheet. The methods of differential geometry of unfolding surfaces were applied to the analytical description of the surface of the helical knife. The parametric equations of the unfolding helicoid were derived according to the given structural parameters of the knife in space and on the plane. That has made it possible to mathematically describe the contour lines that cut the knife from the surface and on its sweep. Formulae for calculating a flat workpiece through the structural parameters of the knife have been derived. Thus, with the specified structural parameters of the knife R=0.25 m, τ=20°, φ=65°, according to the resulting formula, we find the radius of the knife blade on a flat workpiece: R0=4.8 m.