Design and Experiment of a Single-Disk Silage Corn Harvester

Although the mechanized harvesting rate of maize in China has exceeded 90%, there are still shortcomings in the mechanized harvesting of silage maize. Some areas still rely on manual harvesting, which is not only inefficient but also requires more labor. Therefore, it is extremely important to realize the mechanized harvesting of silo maize. The aim of this paper is to improve the harvesting efficiency of silo maize, ensure the quality of the silage and reduce the loss of nutrients. Aiming at the problems of wide cutting width, difficult access, low operating efficiency, and uneven straw feeding in the process of corn silage harvesting in terraced fields in hilly and mountainous areas. This study creatively designed a single-disk corn silage harvester. The optimal Latin hypercube method and MATLAB R2021 software are used to analyze the influence of various factors on the evaluation index. The ternary quadratic regression prediction model was constructed by using Isight 5.6 software, and the accuracy of the model was verified by variance analysis and field experiments. In addition, the main program was optimized by writing the program of the SMPSO algorithm. The optimal combination of working parameters was determined: the working speed was 1.00 m/s, the cutter rotation speed was 1085.89 rpm, and the drum rotation speed was 30 m/s. At that time, the machine productivity was 38 t·h −1 , the average standard grass length rate was 82.15%, and the stubble qualification rate was 91.95%. After two field trials, the results showed that all indicators met the national standards and industry standards, which confirmed the efficiency and practicality of this design.