Substantiating the Design Parameters of a Cleaner of Root Crops from Soil

Introduction. The task of high-quality cleaning of root crops from soil is relevant at all stages of preparing roots for further processing, feeding to animals, and selling. In the machines for cleaning root crops from soil, there is mostly used water. With the water consumption for washing a unit of mass of soiled root crops up to 200–400%, the use of water creates a huge problem including soiled water treatment. The dry method of cleaning root crops is most common in practice and involves the use of appropriate machines, which are not always able to provide the required quality of the finished product. Therefore, the problem of developing a root crop cleaner by the dry cleaning method and substantiating the cleaner optimal parameters to ensure the required quality of the finished product is important and relevant.Aim of the Study. The study is aimed at substantiating theoretically the parameters of a root cleaner with adjacent rollers rotating at different frequen cies.Materials and Methods. The subject of the study is the technological process of cleaning root crops with the dry method. To realize this process, there has been developed a cleaner of root crops from soil, the key features of which are the use of a roller transport-cleaning working element and the ability of adjacent rollers rotate at different frequencies. Individual design parameters of the proposed cleaner have been substantiated theoretically.Results. There have been determined the forces acting on the root crop when it is located on rotating rollers. There has been found the dependence of the angular displacement φ(t), angular velocity ω(t) of the root crop located on rotating rollers, and the dependence of the coefficient of root crop sliding friction on the rollers on the angle α, which determines the relationship between the main design parameters of the working element, in particular, the diameter of the rollers and the distance between them, and the physical and mechanical properties of the root cr ops.Discussion and Conclusion. The studies of the root crop cleaner conducted in laboratory conditions have confirmed the results of theoretical studies and showed that with a length of the transport-cleaning working element of 2 m within a time of 34,4 s it is possible to achieve an efficient cleaning of 78% when the cleaner is equipped with 16 rollers and the ratio of the rotation frequencies for odd and even rollers is 220/250 min–1. The study results are useful for creating and modernizing technical means for post-harvest processing of root crops, conducting further studies on technological improvement of similar means of mechanization of agricultural processes, and for using in the educational process to train technical special ists.