DESIGN AND EXPERIMENTATION OF ROOT-CUTTING DEVICE FOR HEAD-FORMING VEGETABLES

In response to the current low level of mechanized harvesting for heading vegetables in China and the unsatisfactory harvesting results, this study focuses on the root-cutting operation during the harvesting process. A double-disk root-cutting device was designed to achieve low-power consumption and high-efficiency root cutting. Through LS-DYNA simulation experiments, the root-cutting process of the root-cutting device was simulated, and the cutting force and internal cutting energy of three different cutter combinations are compared. The simulation results show that the maximum cutting force of the double-serrated blade was the smallest, while the combination of a smooth blade and a serrated blade had the lowest internal cutting energy. Compared to smooth blades, serrated blades exhibited better clamping effects on the roots of head-forming vegetables. Considering both cutting force and internal cutting energy, the combination of a serrated blade and a smooth blade was found to be optimal. The quadratic rotary orthogonal combination test method was used to analyze the relationship between the main influencing factors of the root cutting device performance (rotational speed of the cutter, conveying speed, inclination angle of the cutter, and overlapping amount of the cutter) and the performance index (root cutting power) of the root cutting device. The bench test program was designed by applying regression analysis, response surface and multi-objective variable optimization methods. The bench test results show that the optimal parameter combination of the designed root cutting device were: cutter speed of 200 rpm, conveying speed of 0.3 m/s, cutter inclination angle of 10°, and cutter overlap of 20 mm. The predicted cutting power of the model was 51.19 W.