Design and Analysis of Cutting Mechanism for Crop Harvester

Abstract

Harvesting is the main part in agricultural automation. The use of crop cutting technology in developing countries to reduce the merchandise cost which will be result in monetary development of agricultural production. This project tends to provide the design and development of cutting mechanism and crop collecting mechanism used for crop harvester machine. The current situation in our country the traditional use of harvesting mechanism is more tedious, time consuming and not able to develop the agricultural sector of the low farmers in economic. Developed cutting mechanism in this project has two sets of blade which cut the crop in a scissoring type of motion. A simple crank and slotted lever mechanism used to provide reciprocating action to cutting blades. The stalks are cut with the impact and shear forces at the linear velocity by cutting blades. This system has a crop collecting mechanism guiding the whole-stalk to one side of machine to stop being crushed under tires and for easy collection. Experimental and Finite element analysis showed that cutting blades had a significant effect on maximum cutting energy and cutting energy required to cut a crop. This demonstrates that Reciprocating blades have better cutting force and energy consumption reduction performance than ordinary rotary blades.