Effect of design and kinematic parameters on energy requirement in inclined screw mixer

Introduction. Rational parameters and modes of an inclined batch screw mixer are validated to achieve the lowest energyintensive feed mixing under observance of the zootechnical requirements for the feed quality on uneven mixing. The establishment of functional dependences between parameters and modes enables to design power-efficient equipment for the on-farm feed production.Materials and Methods. Experimental studies of the feed mixing were implemented on an inclined screw batch feed mixer. The experimental design included variation of four independent factors: mixer shaft speed, filling ratio of the mixing chamber, mixing time, and mixing chamber angle. Mixing irregularity and energy intensity of the process were taken as optimization criteria characterizing the mixing efficiency.Research Results.The optimization criteria versus the variability level factor, which are two-dimensional sections of the second-order response surfaces, are plotted. The rational values at mixing irregularity of less than 5% were as follows: mixer shaft speed was 27...