On technical means of obtaining wood chips, as a way to increase soil fertility

The proposed work outlines the ways to search for new technical solutions that increase the efficiency of the process of ejection of chips from disk chippers, by theoretically substantiating the design and technological parameters of the elements involved in the working process of evacuation of chopped wood. The resulting chips can be used as a mulching agent, which is one of the means of increasing soil fertility. Disc chippers are the most widely used for wood chipping. The chips they produce are best suited for mulching. But disk chippers have such disadvantages as the high energy intensity of the work performed for the processing of wood raw materials into chips. Therefore, it is necessary to justify the design and technological parameters of the chipper elements. To achieve the stated goal of the study, we used a modification of the part dynamics method. Within the framework of this method, the stream of chips was broken up into separate spherical elements. The developed computer program made it possible to carry out a two-factor optimization of the parameters that most significantly affect the efficiency of the equipment. It has been established that two-factor three-criteria optimization of equipment parameters makes it possible to find an optimal combination of structural elements of the chip ejection mechanism. Calculations have shown that the optimal size of the gap between the chipping disc blades and the lateral surface of the cylindrical part of the casing is 9 … 11 mm, and the best chip pipe diameter will be 230 … 300 mm. In this case, the speed of chip ejection will be at least 2.0 m/s, and the share of chips ejected from the first revolution of the chipping disk will be at least 80%. Power consumption for the release of chopped wood will not exceed 700 W.