Development and Performance Evaluation of Maize Stalk Harvester

A power operated maize stalk harvester was designed and developed in the Dept. of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, MPUAT, Udaipur, Rajasthan during 2018-19. The objective of this study is to optimize the operational parameters of the maize stalk harvesting by using the RSM techniques. The effects of independent parameters i.e., blade speed (2000, 4000 and 6000 rpm) and stalk moisture content (38, 42 and 46%) on cutting efficiency (%) and fuel consumption (l/h) were studied. To correlate the independent parameters with the dependent parameters, the central composite rotatable design (CCRD) method with a quadratic model was used. The findings indicated that the variations in blade speed and stalk moisture content affected the cutting efficiency (%) and fuel consumption (l/h). To assess the statistical significance of the model, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed, which showed good agreement between the experimental data and data predicted by the model. The blade speed of 4000 rpm and stalk moisture content of 46.0% was found to be the optimum for power operated maize stalk harvester with the 96.52% cutting efficiency and 0.72 l/h fuel consumption.