Design and Experiment for a Crawler Self-Propelled Potato Combine Harvester for Hilly and Mountainous Areas

Aiming at key issues in harvesting film-covered potatoes in hilly and mountainous areas—incomplete residual film collection, poor potato–soil separation, and high damage from potato-collecting devices—this study developed a crawler self-propelled potato harvester suitable for these regions. This study first expounds the overall structure and working principle of the potato harvester and then conducts principal analysis and structural design for key components (film-collecting device, digging device, primary conveying and separating device, secondary conveying and separating device, and intelligent potato-collecting device) from the perspectives of material force and movement. Finally, field performance tests were carried out in Huangzhong County, Xining City, Qinghai Province. The test results show that the machine can achieve an operation effect with a potato harvest loss rate of 2.4%, a potato damage rate of 1.4%, an impurity content rate of 2.8%, a skin-breaking rate of 2.7%, and a residual film cleaning rate of 89.6%, meeting the potato harvesting needs of this region. The lightweight self-propelled crawler potato harvester designed in this paper can realize functions such as residual film collection, potato–soil vibration separation, manual auxiliary sorting, and intelligent potato boxing, providing technical and equipment references for the harvesting of film-covered potatoes in complex terrain areas.