Results of the study of a sod seeder furrow opener equipped with damping devices

Proposed a design for a sod seeder furrow opener equipped with cutters and a damper-safety device (RF Patent No. 2814067) which effectively smooths out shock loads on the drive when the cutter blades enter the soil and switches it off when the cutter blades encounter obstacles. The purpose of the research was to evaluate the efficiency of the milling furrow opener with damper devices and to preliminarily determine the rational parameters and operating modes of the furrow opener dampers. To conduct experiments in a soil channel, a laboratory installation was made in the form of a separate section of a sod seeder furrow opener with a drive from an electric motor. In the course of comparative studies of the serial furrow opener of SDK seeders and the furrower equipped with damper devices, it was revealed that the use of dampers in the design of disc cutters reduces the energy consumption of milling by 16.6–32.3% compared with the operation of the serial working body, with a greater effect noted in the range of rotation frequencies of cutters from 270 to 385 min-1 . In the process of studying the influence of the parameters and operating mode of the dampers of disk cutters on the energy consumption of milling with a furrow opener through the planning of the experiment, it was revealed that the minimum value of the power consumed by the furrow opener equal to 2.55 kW corresponds to the following values of the factors: the rotational frequency of the cutters of 336 min-1 , the total stiffness of the damper springs of 89.4 N/mm, the traveling speed of 0.7 m/s. The research results confirmed the data from computer modeling and revealed a significant reduction in the energy consumption of milling when using dampers in the design of disc cutters of the furrow cutter.