ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Indicators of Operation for the Forage Chopper RSA/30

0000-0002-0467-9749Héctor de las Cuevas Milán^{I  *}  , 0000-0002-9529-5993Idaris Gómez Ravelo^II  , 0000-0002-8169-8433Yanara Rodríguez López^I  , 0000-0003-1769-7927Pedro P. Paneque Rondón^I  , 0000-0002-9404-6039Mario I. Herrera Prat^III 

^IUniversidad Agraria de La Habana (UNAH), Facultad de Ciencias Técnicas, Centro de Mecanización Agropecuaria (CEMA), San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, Cuba.

^IIUniversidad Agraria de La Habana (UNAH), Facultad de Cultura Física, Departamento de Didáctica de la Educación Física, San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, Cuba.

^IIIMinisterio de Educación Superior, Vedado, Plaza, La Habana. Cuba.

ABSTRACT

The present work is one of the investigations carried out by the Center of Agricultural Mechanization (CEMA) of the Agrarian University of Havana (UNAH), on the evaluation of agricultural groups for the production of food animal, as part of the project “Development of the Technological-Scientific-Educational-Productive Scenario of Cuban Agriculture in the University Farm Guayabal”. Its objective was to determine the indicators of operation of the forage chopper RSA/30 during the crumbling of King Grass. A coefficient of use of the time and productivity, in productive time of 0,66 and 18,70 kg/h, respectively, was obtained.

Key words: Technological Evaluation; Forage; Chopper

INTRODUCTION

In cattle production in Cuba, during the application of new technologies for animal feeding, it is oriented to create fodder areas basically of sugarcane and King Grass, which generated a high demand for mechanized technologies to process these new food sources in dairy farms (^{Valdés et al., 2016}).

For the processing of these plants in the country's livestock entities, forage chopper equipment adapted to the specific operation conditions are required. These machines perform the plant physical breakdown during their shredding which is necessary due to their high-fibre content, so facilitating faster digestion, greater contribution of nutrients and higher energy consumption by the ruminant (Elias et al., 1990; Delgado, 2006, cited by ^{Valdés et al. 2016}), aspect to take into account for the acquisition of these machines (^{Paneque et al., 2018}).

The creation of the National Food Self-Sufficiency Program in the base productive units, demands the production of food required by the cattle mass in their own dairy areas, consequently increasing the native base of food resources and relaying more on the available resources and efficient use of energy (^{Valdés et al., 2012}; ^{de las Cuevas et al., 2015}). The strategy of this program is based on supplying the cattle with shredded fresh forage by using forage choppers from grasses such as sugarcane and King Grass, which when processed by these machines have their fibber content physically broken, facilitating rapid digestion, and greater contribution of nutrients to livestock. That increases animal consumption and productivity and reduces forage waste compared to non-shredded (^{Ramos et al., 2017}).

Several authors have carried out research on forage mincing machines (^{Valdés et al. (2010}, ²⁰¹², ²⁰¹⁵, ²⁰¹⁶, ²⁰¹⁷, ²⁰¹⁹⁾. They highlighted the influence of the constant feeding angle and the moment of inertia on the calibre of the shredded particles by the drum-type forage mincers with manual feeding. In addition, they evaluated the technological and operation indicators of the modified IIMA model EM-01 forage mincer, and determined the energy cost. ^{De las Cuevas et al. (2010)}, ^{de las Cuevas et al. (2011}, ²⁰¹⁵⁾ evaluated the technological and operation indicators of the JF-50 forage chopper added to the Belarus 510 tractor using the automated program "Exploitative Technological Evaluation" TECEXP (^{De las Cuevas et al., 2008}).

In this sense, López et al. (2003) (cited by ^{Valdés et al. 2016}), carried out a nutritional evaluation of eight varieties of sugarcane with forage potential for animal feed with excellent results.

With the sowing of sugarcane and King Grass in the areas of the dairy farms, there is a demand for forage choppers that are adapted to the specific operation conditions of each production unit. For that reason, the investigations related to the evaluation and determination of operation parameters of the different types and models of forage harvesters allow the authors to propose the most suitable ones for the particular conditions of each unit, which will result in an increase in the organizational efficiency of the technological process of the activities related to them.

In recent years in Cuba, several authors have carried out studies on forage mincing machines such as those carried out by ^{Valdés et al. (2010}, ²⁰¹², ²⁰¹⁵, ²⁰¹⁶⁾, where the influence of the constant feeding angle and the moment of inertia on the calibre of the shredded particles by drum-type forage mincers with manual feeding is highlighted. In addition, they evaluated the technology and operation indicators of the modified IIMA model EM-01 fodder mincer and determined the energy cost. De las ^{Cuevas et al. (2009}, ²⁰¹¹, ²⁰¹⁵⁾, evaluated the technological and operational indicators of the JF-50 forage chopper added to the Belarus 510 tractor using the automated program "Exploitative Technological Evaluation" TECEXP (^{De las Cuevas et al., 2008}).

The evaluation of the operation indicators of agricultural machines is very important when evaluating or characterizing a technological process. From which it is possible to trace technical and technological improvements that improve the productivity and quality of the final product.

This study is part of the Research Project ““Development of the Technological-Scientific-Educational-Productive Scenario of Cuban Agriculture in the University Farm Guayabal”, where the Center for Agricultural Mechanization (CEMA) of the King Grass Agrarian University develops research on the evaluation of agricultural sets to produce animal feed. The objective of this work was to determine the indicators of operation of the forage chopper RSA/30 during the crumbling of King Grass. The balance of time (clean, operational and productive), hourly productivity, technological and technical safety coefficient and coefficient of use of productive time are evaluated.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The investigations took place at Guayabal University Farm, belonging to the Agrarian University of Havana (UNAH), in Mayabeque Province, where RSA/30 forage chopper was evaluated (Figure 1). It is a stationary type machine, with electric drive and a three-phase motor of 220 V, 3440 min-1 and 3 kW of power. Its design corresponds to the production of animal feed, both for daily feeding and for storage in the form of silage. The machine has forced feed and electrical operation.

For the elaboration of the shredded fresh forage, King Grass was used. The experimental data were collected during the month of March 2022, under the following average weather conditions: relative humidity 71.47%, temperature 27.2°C, rainfall rate 15.56 mm, atmospheric pressure 1020 hPa and wind speed 4.2 m/s.

FIGURE 1 RSA/30 forage chopper. 

^{Standard PG-CA-043 (2013)} was used to determine the operational technological indicators. The timing and classification of the times of each operation was carried out according to the established model. For the evaluation and determination of the different times, productivity and operation coefficients, the automated system "Exploitative Technological Evaluation" TECEXP by ^{De las Cuevas et al. (2008)} was used, with the use of the following expressions:

Productivity per hour of clean time, W1

${\mathit{W}}_1=\frac{\mathit{Q}}{{\mathit{T}}_1},\mathit{ }\mathit{t}/\mathit{h}$ (1)

where:

Q	- amount of grass mass processed during the work of the machine, t;
T1	- clean work time, h.

Productivity per hour of operating time, W02

${\mathit{W}}_{02}=\frac{\mathit{Q}}{{\mathit{T}}_{02}},t/h$ (2)

where:

T02	- operating time, h;

${\mathit{T}}_{02}={\mathit{T}}_1+{\mathit{T}}_2,h$ (3)

where:

T2	- auxiliary time, h.

Productivity per hour of productive time, W04

${\mathit{W}}_{04}=\frac{\mathit{Q}}{{\mathit{T}}_{04}},t/h$ (4)

where:

T04	-productive time, h;

${\mathit{T}}_{04}={\mathit{T}}_1+{\mathit{T}}_2+{\mathit{T}}_3+{\mathit{T}}_4,\mathrm{h}$ (5)

where:

T3	- time of technical maintenance of the machine, h;
T4	- time for fixing failures, h.

To determine the productivity in clean time W1, the chopper is put into operation and after stabilizing the movement of the work organ, the King Grass is introduced through the feeding hopper. Operation times are measured with a 1s precision digital stopwatch.

The different values of the operation coefficients are determined by:

Technological safety coefficient, K41

${\mathit{T}}_{41}=\frac{{\mathit{T}}_1}{{\mathit{T}}_1}+{\mathit{T}}_{41}$ (6)

where:

T41	- Time for elimination of technological failures, h;

Technical safety coefficient, K42.

${\mathit{K}}_{42}=\frac{{\mathit{T}}_1}{{\mathit{T}}_1}+{\mathit{T}}_{42}$ (7)

where:

T42	- Time to eliminate technical failures, h;

Coefficient of use of productive time, K04

${\mathit{K}}_{04}=\frac{{\mathit{T}}_1}{({\mathit{T}}_1+{\mathit{T}}_{04})}$ (8)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Analysis of the operation indicators behavior of the RSA/3 forage chopper, for King Grass shredding.

Table 1 shows the results of the operation indicators, obtained from the automated system (TECEXP).

Labor: Shredded King Grass.

Place of evaluation: Guayabal University Farm.

TABLE 1 Operation indices of the RSA/30 forage chopper in the shredding of King Grass 

Indicators Unit Values		Unit	Values Values
Clean time		h	1.40
Operating time		h	2,07
Productive time		h	2.14
Productivity per hour:
of clean time		kg/h	28.52
of operating time		kg/h	19.30
of productive time		kg/h	18.70
Technological safety coefficient		-	0,96
Technical safety factor		-	1,00
Productive Time Utilization Ratio		-	0.66

The evaluation was carried out in an observation time of 2:08:20 h. It was found that clean work time represented 65.58% of total work time. The technical and technological safety coefficients took values ​​between one and 0.96, respectively, considered adequate, since the loss of time for these concepts is in the range of 0 and 4%, respectively.

The coefficient of utilization of productive time is 66%. The use of this chopper is advantageous, compared to that achieved in the stationary chopper MF IIMA model EM-01 (^{Valdés et al., 2015}), which presents a (K04) of 59%. RSA/30 chopper presents a 7% greater use of time compared to the MF IIMA. The technological stops presented during the test correspond to the manual bags filling with the product.

The productivity per hour of clean time was 28.52 kg/h, with operational and productive time values ​​of 19.30 and 18.70 kg/h, respectively. Although these indicators are lower than those obtained by ^{Valdés (2015)} when evaluating the MF IIMA model EM-01 stationary chopper, are adequate according to the dimensions of the machine under study.

CONCLUSIONS

• The coefficient of use of time and productivity in productive time of the RSA/30 forage chopper are 0.66 and 18.70 kg/h, respectively.

• In the technological process there were no losses of time due to breakdowns, with a technical safety coefficient of 1.

• Technological safety was affected 4% of the time, due to jams in the feeding process of the RSA/30 chopper.

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Received: August 25, 2022; Accepted: December 09, 2022

^*Author for correspondence: Héctor de las Cuevas Milán, e-mail: [e-mail]

Héctor R. de las Cuevas-Milán. MSc., Inv. Auxiliar, Universidad Agraria de La Habana (UNAH), Facultad de Ciencias Técnicas, Centro de Mecanización Agropecuaria (CEMA), Carretera de Tapaste y Autopista Nacional km 23 ½. San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, Cuba

Idaris Gómez-Ravelo. Dr.C., Profesora Titular, Universidad Agraria de La Habana (UNAH), Facultad de Cultura Física, Dpto. de Didáctica de la Educación Física, Carretera de Tapaste y Autopista Nacional km 23 ½. San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, Cuba, e-mail: [e-mail].

Yanara, Rodríguez-López. Dr.C., Inv. Auxiliar, Universidad Agraria de La Habana (UNAH), Facultad de Ciencias Técnicas, Centro de Mecanización Agropecuaria (CEMA), Carretera de Tapaste y Autopista Nacional km 23 ½. San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, Cuba, e-mail: [e-mail].

Pedro Paneque-Rondón. Dr.C., Inv. Titular, Universidad Agraria de La Habana (UNAH), Facultad de Ciencias Técnicas, Centro de Mecanización Agropecuaria (CEMA), Carretera de Tapaste y Autopista Nacional km 23 ½. San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, Cuba, e-mail: [e-mail].

Mario Ignacio Herrera-Prat. Dr.C., Inv. Titular, Ministerio de Educación Superior. Calle 23 No. 565 entre F y G. Vedado, Plaza, La Habana. Cuba, e-mail: [e-mail] .

The authors of this work declare no conflict of interests.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS: Conceptualization: H. de las Cuevas. Data curation: H. de las Cuevas, I. Gómez, P. Paneque, Y. Rodríguez. Formal analysis: H. de las Cuevas, I. Gómez, P. Paneque. Investigation: H. de las Cuevas, I. Gómez, P. Paneque, Y. Rodríguez, M. Herrera. Methodology: H. de las Cuevas, I. Gómez, Y. Rodríguez, P. Paneque. Supervision: H. de las Cuevas, I. Gómez, Y. Rodríguez, P. Paneque. Software: H. de las Cuevas, I. Gómez. Roles/Writing, original draft: H. de las Cuevas. Writing, review & editing: Y. Rodríguez, M. Herrera.