Design and Simulation of Chinese Cabbage Harvester

In view of the problems of low work efficiency and high operating costs caused by manual harvesting of Chinese cabbage in China, in this study, a Chinese cabbage harvester with agronomic integrity was designed. The harvester is mainly composed of a crawler chassis, a drawing device, a flexible clamping device, a cutting device, and a horizontal delivery device. Firstly, physical properties of Chinese cabbage such as diameter, plant height, weight, and drawing rate of Chinese cabbage were measured and analyzed to provide necessary basic data for the design of the harvester. Secondly, simulation tests were conducted on the Chinese cabbage harvesting process; a 3D model of Chinese cabbage using SolidWorks 2022 was established and filled with particles using the three-layer stacking method. At the same time, SolidWorks was applied to simplify the model of the Chinese cabbage harvester. The belt of the machine model was set as a flexible body through RecurDyn 2023 software and coupled with EDEM 2022 for simulation analysis. Based on single factor tests, the BBD model was applied to conduct multi-factor response surface analysis on the above factor levels. The optimal working conditions of the harvester were obtained as follows: the rotating speed of the cutting device was 207.85 r/min, the rotating speed of the flexible clamping conveyor belt was 165.51 r/min, the rotating speed of the drawing device was 102.38 r/min, and the machine walking speed was 1.37 km/h. The qualified rate of Chinese cabbage harvesting was the highest, achieving a maximum theoretical value of 97.91%. Field validation tests were conducted on the designed Chinese cabbage harvester. Based on the actual operating conditions of the Chinese cabbage harvester and the simulated operating parameters, the optimal parameter combination was finally determined as follows: rotating speed of the root cutting device was 200 r/min, rotating speed of the flexible clamping conveyor belt was 160 r/min, rotating speed of the drawing device was 100 r/min, and machine walking speed was 1.4 km/h, respectively. Through field verification tests, the highest qualified rate of Chinese cabbage harvesting reached 93.19%, showing a good harvesting effect, which approximates the simulated optimal qualified rate of 97.91%, meeting the mechanized harvesting demand of Chinese cabbage. This study provides reference to the further design and development of Chinese cabbage harvesters in the future.