Effects of Knife Shapes and Cutting Speeds of a Mower on the Power Consumption for Pulverizing Sweet Potato Vine

Two different shapes of knives (L and Y-shaped) for the rotary slasher with 300 knife cutting angle at three cutting speeds (1830, 2066 and 2044 rpm) were used to indicate their effects on the power consumption for pulverizing sweet potato vine which passed through the sieve (< 28 mm2). The results indicated that all the treatments were significant at p 0.01 significance level for the power consumption on sweet potato vine pulverizing. The best result was recorded from L-shaped knife with a power consumption of 52.12 Watts for sweet potato vine pulverization. Meanwhile, the best result was for the mower speed at 1830 rpm with the lowest power consumption of 61.23 Watts. The best performance for interaction between knife shapes and the cutting speeds was achieved by the L-shaped knife at 1830 rpm with lowest power consumption of 50.23 Watts at p 0.01.