RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF THE PROCESS OF SOIL REMOVAL AND LOADING IN GREENHOUSES

Abstract

Growing vegetables in greenhouses allows having frequent harvests and provides the population with fresh produce year-round. Nowadays, especially with the development of organic farming, along with hydroponic farming, soil technology is widely used, plants being grown on specially prepared soil mixtures consisting of natural components. The use of this technology involves the periodic re-placement of the upper (sanitary) soil layer in greenhouses. There are practically no specialized ma-chines for performing the operation to remove the sanitary layer, and unadapted machines and equipment are used to perform this technological operation on farms. To perform this operation, a new design of a trailed machine for removing and loading soil has been proposed. The results of ex-perimental studies of the influence of operating parameters on the energy intensity of the process of removing and loading soil are presented, and the nature of the dependence of the power required to drive the machine on operating parameters has been established. The results obtained made it possi-ble to establish the actual values of the operating parameters at which the values of energy intensity and power take rational values, which makes it possible to establish the effectiveness of the pro-posed machine design, thereby completely mechanizing the process of removing and loading soil in greenhouses.

Keywords

• power
• energy intensity
• soil mixtures
• substrate
• greenhouse