Reducing fuel consumption for chopping maize with a self-propelling forage harvester: INNOVATIONS TO MEET FUTURE CHALLENGES

First, operators of forage choppers have been surveyed about their schemes for knife grinding and clearance adjustment. The results show, that there is a great variability. Operators are grinding from 1 to 6 times per day with 1 to more than 75. About 75 % of the operators are immediately adjusting the clearance after grinding. Second, field tests have been carried out with a forage harvester (372 kW). Fuel consumption, driving speed, knife wear, parameters of the chopped maize, and other data have been measured. The highest influence on the specific fuel consumption (litre fuel per ton of chopped maize) was caused by the throughput (R-2 > 90 %). Therefore, for reducing the fuel consumption the throughput has to be maximized. With the test machine up to about 50 ha of maize could be chopped without grinding and without a significant increase in fuel consumption or loss in chopping quality. This means that for these tests the grinding had to be carried out only every second day and with 10 cycles at most. Therefore, many operators have to change their schemes for grinding intervals and intensities.

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