Development and Evaluation of Axial Flow Paddy Thresher Equipped with Feeder Chain Type Mechanical Feeding System
Manish Ahuja *
Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, India
Baldev Dogra
Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, India
M. K. Narang
Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, India
Ritu Dogra
Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, India
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The threshing of paddy which was usually done by manual feeding in threshers led to the reduction of threshing capacity due to half filling of threshing drum. This drawback had given rise to mechanical feeding system for wheat threshers which increased their threshing capacity. In this study, in order that the threshing capacity should increase, a feeder chain type feeding system for axial flow paddy thresher was developed. The type of feeder housing used in this thresher was of trapezoidal shape. The length of chain was 2830 mm and two sprockets having diameter 320 mm each. After preliminary testing, it’s performance evaluation was studied on PR-124 to ascertain the effect of cylinder speed (12.27, 14.44 and 16.61 m/s), conveyor speed (2.52, 2.96 and 3.4 m/s) and feed rate (4.08, 4.8 and 5.52 t/h). The threshing efficiency, non-collectable loss, broken grain, cleaning efficiency, sieve overflow and torque were 98.90%, 0.55%, 0.23%, 98.44%, 0.38% and 336.3 Nm respectively at the best combination of cylinder speed, feed rate and conveyor speed of 16.61 m/s, 5.52 t/h and 2.52 m/s respectively.
Keywords: Axial flow, paddy, mechanical feeding, conveyor system, torque etc