并联式多采摘头红花采摘装置的设计与试验OA

Safflower is one of the key specialty cash crops in Xinjiang of western China.It can serve multiple purposes,including medicinal,edible,dye,oil,and feed use.However,the filaments have relied mainly on manual harvesting,due to the labor-intensive,costly,and seasonal labor shortages.Furthermore,fresh safflower fruit balls are characterized by the scattered spatial distribution and varying heights.Existing harvesting equipment can also be limited to low efficiency,a high miss rate of fruit balls,or fruit damage.It is often required for the high throughput and picking rate during harvesting.Therefore,there is an urgent need to develop efficient and well-adapted mechanical harvesters for safflowers.This study aims to develop a safflower harvesting device with the parallel multi-picking-heads.A gathering first and picking later strategy was proposed to enhance harvesting efficiency during continuous mechanical operation.High efficient,low-damage,and continuous blind harvesting of fresh safflower was achieved to coordinate a feeding/gathering mechanism with multiple picking units.A continuous dynamic envelope was formed around the plant canopy.Firstly,a feeding and gathering mechanism was designed in the device,according to the physical properties of safflower plants and the mechanics of their branches.The structural parameters were determined as a channel width of 200 mm,a divider plate angle of 66°,and an installation height of 580 mm.An orderly picking interface was constructed to significantly compress the lateral distribution width of the fruit balls by 47.62%.Subsequently,a parallel picking unit was centered on three sets of counter-rotating rollers.The geometrical parameters of the roller were set as follows:diameter 30 mm,gap 1.8 mm,length 300 mm,and center distance 85 mm.Mass property analysis was conducted to determine the kinematic constraints.The minimum reciprocating cycle of the unit was obtained greater than 2.45 s.A spatial motion trajectory was established to couple the forward speed,the reciprocating cycle of the picking units,and thee phase difference.Multiple picking heads were complemented the phase differences to form the continuous dynamic envelope in the full coverage of the harvesting area.Taking the filament net picking rate and the fruit ball miss rate as the evaluation metrics,single-factor tests were conducted to optimize the parameter ranges.Box-Behnken response surface method(RSM)was employed to optimize the operational parameters:a phase difference of 0.54π,a reciprocating cycle of 2.9 s,and a forward speed of 0.46 km/h.Field tests were implemented to validate these optimal parameters.The results show that the better performance was achieved in a filament net picking rate of 90.27%and a fruit ball miss rate of 10.93%.The relative error between the experimental and the predictions was less than 5%,fully meeting the industry standards for mechanized safflower harvesting.Simple operation was effectively integrated with the gathering and multi-head coordinated picking for the efficient continuous blind harvesting of fresh safflower.The labor intensity and production costs were reduced significantly,suitable for the large-scale cultivation in arid regions like Xinjiang.This finding can also provide the theoretical and technical reference for the harvesting equipment of fresh safflower.