The Required Energy for Soybean Cutting with Cutter Bar

Abstract

The trend to use the soybean harvester is increasing nowadays. During several harvesting times with harvester, especially in rainy season, many soybeans were pull by cutter bar instead of cutting. Thus, the stick soils at soybean root were increased and caused more impurity and damaged grain during threshing stage. Therefore, the study of the required energy for soybean cutting with cutter bar will be useful for design and develop the more suitable soybean harvester to reduced this problem.

In this study, four upland sorbean, Jackrapan 2, Chiangmai 60, SJ 5 and KKU 35, at harvesting age (R8) were used. Soybean stems were random from two planning patterns: 1) hill dropping pattern that cause from manual planting. And 2) drill dropping pattern that cause from machine planting. The random area was about 5 rows x 2 m.

It was found that, the required energy for soy bean cutting with cutter bar can be estimated from:

1) Hill dropping pattern E_w = [3.014 ln(W) + 3.914]E_s watt

2) Drill dropping pattern: E_w = [1.763 ln(W) + 0.922]E_s watt

For W = cutting width (1-5 rows), and E_s = the required energy per tree (Jackrapan 1 and KKU 35 = 2.686 watt, Chiangmai 60 = 3.44 watt, and SJ 5 3.305 watt)