DEVELOPMENT OF A HARVESTING MACHINE FOR FABA BEAN (Vicia faba L.) CROP

El-Shal, M.S.; Abd El-Wahab, M.K.; Tawfik, M.A.; Metwally, K A.

doi:10.21608/mjae.2014.99153

DEVELOPMENT OF A HARVESTING MACHINE FOR FABA BEAN (Vicia faba L.) CROP

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Prof. Emeritus, Agric. Eng. Dept., Fac. of Agric., Zagazig Univ., Egypt

² Associate Prof., Agric. Eng. Dept., Fac. of Agric., Zagazig Univ., Egypt.

³ Assistant lecturers, Agric. Eng. Dept., Fac. of Agric., Zagazig Univ., Egypt.

10.21608/mjae.2014.99153

Abstract

The aim of this study is fabricating and developing a local mower with windrowing mechanism for harvesting faba bean (Vicia faba L.) crop in small holdings. The practical experiments were divided into two groups. The first one is the preliminary experiment to choose the proper crop conveyor angle and the horizontal distance between cutter bar and crop conveyor. The second one is the main experiment that conducted to evaluate the performance of the developed mower under four average forward speeds of 1.80, 3.00, 4.30 and 5.80 km/h, four stem moisture contents of 24.20, 30.30, 35.80 and 41.70 % (w.b), three cutter bar speeds of 1.44, 1.96 and 2.38 m/s and three conveying fingers speeds of 1.63, 2.23 and 2.70 m/s under three planting methods of manual planting, seed drill and pneumatic planter taking into consideration the actual field capacity, field efficiency, total seed losses, required power and specific energy requirements From the obtained results, it is recommended to use the pneumatic planter and operate the developed mower at average forward speed of 4.30 km/h, stem moisture content of 30.30%, conveying fingers speed of 2.23 m/s, crop conveyor angle of 60^°and cutter bar speed of 1.96 m/s with horizontal distance between the cutter bar and conveyor of 7 cm to achieve the lowest values of total seed losses(0.23%), criterion costs (41.8 L.E/fed) and specific energy requirement (6.92 kW.h/fed) at actual field capacity of 1.64 fed/h and field efficiency of 79.10%.

References

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