Performance Evaluation of Tractor Drawn Turmeric Digger

Performance evaluation of tractor drawn turmeric digger was studied by conducting experiments on a test set-up having provision to vary design variables. The test set-up consists of digging unit and soil separation unit. Three digging blades are selected i.e. Strips shape, Inverted 'V' shape and Crescent shape for digger machine for comparing on field test. The design parameters - soil moisture content, rake angle of digging unit and speed of operation of digger machine were evaluated. Performance parameters like digging efficiency, damaged percentage of turmeric rhizomes, soil separation index and power requirement were measured at different levels of design parameters and design values of different components were determined. In strips shape digging blade the maximum digging efficiency was observed 97. 35 per cent at 3.0 km/h speed of operation with 20o of rake angle and optimum soil moisture content was 14.23±0.35 respectively. Minimum damage percentage of turmeric rhizomes of 4.7 per cent was observed in strips shape digging blade with 20o rake angle at 3.0 km/h speed of operation and soil moisture content 14.23±0.35 per cent respectively. The soil separation index was most affected by rake angle of soil digging unit and speed of operation of digger machine. A minimum soil separation index of 0.25 was obtained at 15o and 20o rake angle at 3 km/h speed of operation digger machine respectively. An average minimum power requirement for the operation of turmeric digger for selected three digging blades i.e. strips shape, inverted 'v' shape and crescent shape at a speed of 1.5 km•h-1 was 0.91, 1.15 and 1.21 kW at 15° of rake angle and soil moisture content 14.23±0.35 per cent.