Performance evaluation of flail unit of forage harvester on sorghum fodder

Fodder harvesting, transporting and its chopping is a major resource consuming component in dairy farming business. To do all these operations simultaneously, a tractor operated flail type forage harvester cum chopper was developed in the Department of FM&PE, PAU, but the machine could not become popular at farmer's field because of uneven size of cut of fodder. For this, flail unit of forage harvester was studied to develop a tractor operated flail type forage harvester with chaffing system. Flail unit of forage harvester was studied for different flail peripherial speeds (3 levels: 25, 29 & 35 m/s) and forward speeds (3 levels: 2.5, 3.8 & 4.6 km/h) for harvesting sorghum fodder. Height of cut, percent size of cut in between 10 and 20 cm and more than 20 cm reduced with increase in flail peripheral speed at all forward speed of machine. Percent size of cut less than 10 cm, harvesting efficiency, flail throw efficiency, material capacity and fuel consumption increased with increase in flail peripheral speed at all forward speed of machine.