Experimental Research on Sugarcane Under-the-Ground Basecutting

Abstract.Basecutting, an important process in mechanical sugarcane harvesting, has important influence on the development of sugarcane mechanical harvesting. Previous studies mainly focus on kinematic and dynamic models in theory and indoor basecutting tests. However, few studies have explored the cutting mode of basecutter and power consumption with under-the-ground basecutting mode. The objective of this study was to compare two different basecutting modes (above-the-ground basecutting and under-the-ground basecutting), investigate the cutting power consumption and the cutting quality when sugarcane was cut in the optimal cutting mode. Through the means of simulation analysis and contrast experiment comparison, it concluded that the under-the-ground basecutting mode was better than above-the-ground basecutting mode to improve the cutting quality but it has increased the cutting power consumption of basecutters. In the under-the-ground basecutting mode, the orthogonal experiment was carried out using the existing sugarcane harvester, in order to minimize the power consumption while keeping the stubble broken rate to an acceptable level. With the power consumption and stubble broken rate being set as the indexes, the effects of basecutting depth, disc rotational speed, and the harvester forward speed on basecutting performance were investigated. Through the analysis of variance and range analysis, the influence of each factor on the evaluation index was obtained, and the best parameter combination with minimum stubble broken rate and power consumption were determined: the basecutting depth was 40 mm, the disc rotation speed was 600 rpm, and the harvester forward speed was 0.6 m/s. This study provided necessary information to guide engineers to design high-performance basecutter with under-the-ground basecutting mode. Keywords: Basecutter, Cutting mode, Power consumption, Stubble broken rate, Under-the-ground basecutting.