RESEARCH OF SUGAR BEET HAULM CUTTING PROCESS

Sugar beet is an important technical crop for Ukraine. Sugar beet is grown on an area of about 1 million hectares in Ukraine. In today's economic conditions, large agricultural enterprises use high-performance automotive harvesters to harvest sugar beet roots. For the needs of small and medium-sized farms, there is almost no supply of new equipment for harvesting this crop. Analysis of well-known research scientists in the field of sugar beet harvesting indicates that their main focus is to find ways to resolve the technical contradiction, which is to copy the height of the sugar beet roots above the field surface in sugar beet haulm toppers that cut the sugar beet haulms with a solid horizontal rotor at least 4 rows. At the same time, there are no technical and theoretical justifications that would radically resolve such a contradiction. During the analysis of technological operations of sugar beet harvesting, in particular sugar beet haulm cutting, a number of parameters were identified, the impact of which on the energy of the cutting process requires research. The article presents a functional scheme of a trailed beet harvester that does not require copying the height of the root heads above the field surface for quality cutting of the sugar beet haulms. In order to verify the operability of the proposed scheme, a laboratory installation was made to study the cutting process of the sugar beet haulms. A method for studying the torque spent on the cutting process has been developed. This technique is based on the use of mathematical method of experiment planning. Based on the results of the experiment, a regression equation was obtained that reveals the effect on the dimension of the cutting torque the maximum diameter of sugar beets, the angle of the beet axis and the gap between the plane of the knife and the lower edge of the pulley. Response surfaces were constructed to analyze the regression equation of cutting process. As a result of generalization, recommendations are given.