Development and Testing of the Adaptive Control System for Profiling Grain Header

In the harvesting operation, the stubble height of the grain is a vital parameter index in the combined harvesting operation; if the stubble is too high or too low, it will directly affect the harvesting quality and the service life of the header. At present, the profiling control system can only control the lift of the header in the vertical direction but not the horizontal direction and the angle of the cutter profiling. This study proposes a contouring control strategy and system for grain harvesting by analyzing the designed contouring adjustment mechanism and simulating the control method and hydraulic system through Amesim2404 software to simulate and analyze the control method and hydraulic system. Finally, different forward speeds of the harvester (5, 7, 9, and 11 km/h) and other cutting heights of the harvester were analyzed based on static and field tests and different stubble heights (100, 150, 200, and 250 mm) on the test indexes. The results of the field test showed that for different operating speeds, the error between the mean value of stubble height and the target value was small, the absolute error was less than 2 mm, the mean value of the coefficient of variation of stubble height was 4.53%, and the mean value of control accuracy is 94%. The developed adaptive control system of the profiled grain header has high precision and stability, which can provide a reference for the all-terrain profiling control technology of the combined harvester header deck.