Acta Agriculturae Zhejiangensis ›› 2026, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (1): 170-183.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1004-1524.20250126

• Biosystems Engineering • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Design and experiment of key components for a pneumatic recovery system in the low-loss harvesting header of rapeseed

TONG Xuequan1(), JIN Yuguo1, SONG Xi1, WU Mingliang1,2, JIANG Xiaohu1,2, LUO Haifeng1,2,*()   

  1. 1. College of Engineering, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha 410128, China
    2. Hunan Key Laboratory of Intelligent Agricultural Machinery and Equipment, Changsha 410128, China
  • Received:2025-02-24 Online:2026-01-25 Published:2026-02-11

Abstract:

To address high header loss rate in rapeseed combine harvesting, a pneumatic recovery device was designed using a “bidirectional air intake-centralized middle air supply” method. The device mainly comprises fan, transmission system, air supply unit, header, and splash guards. A stable air curtain generated by the air supply unit directionally recovers the shattered pods and dropped seeds on the header via airflow, enabling low-loss harvesting. The internal flow field of the air ducts was simulated and optimized with Fluent. Using the inner diameters of the main duct left/right inlets, the airflow reducer end, and the airflow branch duct outlet as the test factors, and the outlet wind velocity non-uniformity as the evaluation index, a ternary quadratic regression orthogonal simulation test was conducted. Results showed that the order of primary-to-secondary factors affecting outlet wind velocity non-uniformity was: inner diameter of airflow branch duct outlet, inner diameter of airflow reducer end, and inner diameter of main duct left/right inlet. The optimal duct parameters were: main duct left/right inlets inner diameter 63 mm, reducer end inner diameter 56 mm, and branch duct outlet inner diameter 14 mm. A bench test with fan speed, horizontal distance, and inclination angle as factors indicated optimal seed recovery at 3 000 r·min-1, 350.5 mm, and 76.8°. A prototype low-loss rapeseed combine harvester was developed by adding a mechanical transmission driven by the existing threshing power to operate this pneumatic recovery device. The device achieved an outlet wind velocity non-uniformity of 1.19%, indicating good airflow stability. Field tests showed a header loss rate of 2.75%, which was 1.3 percentage points lower than that without the pneumatic recovery device, achieving effective low-loss combine harvesting.

Key words: rapeseed, combine harvesting, header loss reduction, air-assisted recovery, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation

CLC Number: