Abstract:
The main grape-producing areas in foreign countries have a warm and humid climate all year round, which is suitable for grape growth. Different from foreign countries, the winter climate in the grape cultivation areas of northern China is cold, dry, and windy, which causes freezing damage to grapevines. Therefore, it is necessary to take measures to prevent cold on the grapevine to make the grapevines safe overwinter. Buried soil is commonly used in winter in northern China. It is necessary to take measures to clear the cold-proof soil in spring. The mechanization degree of this operation is not high, and the soil clearing operation is based on manual work. It brings great problems, such as manual operation labor intensity and low efficiency. While there are mechanical soil clearing machines, the working parts are mostly rigid and can easily damage the grapevines. It is urgently needed to study effective soil clearing machines. Aiming at the problems existing in the spring soil cleaning of grapes in north China, this paper designed a kind of grapevine cold-proof soil clearing machine with a combination type of air-blowing and comb-brush based on the sandy soil characteristics of vineyards in north China. The machine is composed of the frame, soil clearing brush assembly, high-pressure fan assembly, and driving mechanism. It used the soil clearing brush and high-pressure fan to realize flexible soil clearing operation. The analysis of this study determined that the soil clearing brush became a double-layer structure. The high-pressure fan was selected from the Wen He 8-09 type. The air outlet was a cylindrical universal ball-hinged structure. The air outlet orientation adjustment device could realize the adjustment of the angle and height of the air outlet in the three-dimensional space. Also, this paper determined three parameters that affect the direction of the high-pressure air jet direction, which are the orientation of the air outlet, including angle α between the projection of the central axis of the air outlet along the z axis and the x axis, angle β between the projection of the central axis of the air outlet along the x axis and the z axis, and corresponding point H at the front end of the air on the side of the soil ridge. Based on previous research, the prototype was processed. The study used the pseudo-level method to design the test, which optimized the air outlet orientation with the qualification rate of soil clearing as the evaluation index. The analysis of variance was carried out on the test results. The three parameters that determine the air outlet orientation in the order from the largest to smallest influence on the qualification rate of soil clearing are α, β, and H. The optimized combination of parameters is α at 30°, β at 60°, and H at the midpoint. The qualification rate of soil clearing is 89.3% at this time. According to the optimized results, the air outlet orientation was adjusted, and the operational performance of the machine was tested. The average qualification rate of soil clearing was 91.3%. The grapevines were not damaged in the operation of the machine. The soil clearing effect was good, and the operation efficiency was high, which was 50 times the artificial soil clearing efficiency. The research results can provide a new development idea for the cold-proof soil clearing of grapevines in northern China and provide a reference for the subsequent research on grape soil clearing machinery.