Experimental research on performance of flexible screw conveyor when transporting agricultural materials

Abstract

The paper presents the design of a flexible screw conveyor working body and a laboratory setup for experimental studies of determining its performance in transporting agricultural materials. Studies of conveying capacity have allowed to determine its dependence on many factors that characterize the process, namely: screw rotation frequency n, coefficient ψ of line filling, inner diameter of the pipeline shell D. To determine the effect of these parameters on the performance of the screw conveyor, a full-factor experiment was conducted, the results of which showed that the dominant factor influencing the performance value is the rotation frequency of the working body n, and the least influential is the diameter of the housing D, but the value of the cooefficient ψ of the main also has a significant effect on the performance of the transportation process. So, when changing the rotation frequency of the working body within the range of 300...800 rpm, the productivity increases by 50% for barley and 48% for industrial salt, when changing the line filling ratio within the range of 0.3...0.5, the productivity increases by 16% for barley and 18% for industrial salt, and when changing the pipeline diameter D from 0.08 m to 0.1 the productivity increases by 0.7% for barley and 0.2% for industrial salt.