Feasibility study of the use of a batch header for harvesting cereal

One of the reasons of high grain loss during harvesting is the mismatch of harvesting operations with the time of crop maturation. Because of a large load on the combine harvester at present time, the duration of the harvest period is almost 3-5 times longer than it should be according to the agronomic terms. Modern high production combine harvesters in low grain yield cannot load more than 40-70%. According to some researchers, for such conditions it is advisable to use two-phase grain harvesting. It is advisable to use portions of the cumulative principle of the formation of rolls of bread mass, which allows to form rolls of the required capacity regardless of yield. For this purpose, on the basis of Orenburg state agricultural university a portion header was developed. To optimize the parameters and modes of the harvesting unit operation, the objective function conditioned by the criterion of minimum integral costs should be set. Its main components are the following: costs for renovation and repairs, wage costs for machine operators, fuel and lubricants costs, the total losses of grain behind the header, crop yield losses caused by long run of works, losses of future grain yields as result of soil compaction.The most real in terms of optimization are the costs associated with the losses of grain behind the header in the process of harvesting. As a result of the conducted research, certain limitations for the experienced model by the criterion of minimum integral costs of the process of two-phase grain harvesting were revealed, which make it possible to determine the efficiency of the process of grain crop mowing in windrows with the portion header during the two-phase harvesting under the specific technological conditions.