Design and Experiment on Cylinder-type and articulated-type cutterhead of Harvester for Fodder Rape.

Fodder rape is a good quality feed crop, and it can effectively alleviate the problem of lack of green feed for livestock in winter and spring. Because of high water content and crispy texture of fodder rape, there is a lack of applicable harvesting machinery in Mid-lower Yangtze River in China. Cylinder-type cutterhead and articulated-type cutterhead for a fresh fodder rape harvester were designed to solve the problems. The working processes were analyzed and an innovative mechanical system was designed. The effects of the two kinds of cutterheads were compared and analyzed by bench tests. Based on the results of the experiments, the average length of the stems after chopping by both cutterheads meets the requirements for fodder, the length uniformity of the cylinder-type cutterhead is better than that of the articulated-type cutterhead; the average energy consumption of the articulated-type is less than that of the cylinder-type, but the stability and reliability of the cylinder-type is better than that of the articulated-type. When the feed rate of the harvester was in the range of 5~9 kg/s, the average length of the materials cut by the cylinder-type cutterhead ranged from 49.91mm to 65.64 mm, the length uniformity ranged from 77.42 % ~ 82.09 %, which met the feeding requirements of fresh fodder rape. The results show that the materials harvested by the cylinder-type cutterhead can meet the requirements of winter and spring fresh feeding of rape, which can significantly reduce the labor cost of feeding, improve the efficiency and the materials utilization rate. This research could provide a reference for the improvement of chopping device for fresh fodder rapeseed in winter and spring.