Justification of the design and parameters of the device for separating root crops

A feature of the cultivation of root crops in our country is that the vast majority of them are produced in personal and other small-scale farms. As a rule, in such farms, almost all operations are performed manually, which leads to relatively low productivity and significant labor costs, especially during harvesting and pre-sale harvesting. The purpose of the present study is to develop a design and determine some rational parameters of a universal device for separating root crops from the top, taking into account their potential use in small-scale farms. The authors proposed an installation that allows partially mechanizing the pruning of tops of root crops. Two adjoining V-belt drives are used in it as a bearing element, and a copy plate with a guide slot and a knife fixed on it is used as a topping device. In the installation of the proposed design, the quality of the removal of tops will significantly depend on how the parameters of the copying plate correspond to the technological characteristics of the treated plants. The combination of theoretical and experimental studies showed that when cutting radish plants, the width of the guide slot should be about 17 mm (with a height of its vertical edges of about 1 mm and a bevel angle of 45°). Based on statistical analysis, it was found that the probability of a «cutting defect» of less than one millimeter is about 68%, and the probability of a «cutting defect» of more than two millimeters is slightly less than 5%. An increase in the width of the guide slot in the copying plate leads to an increase in the likelihood of «overcutting» the tops with an intensity of about 1 mm by 2 mm.