Abstract:In order to realize the recycling of cottonstalk, it has been an urgent need to develop a cotton-stalk harvester applicable to the mechanical cotton picking and planting model in Xinjiang, so as to advance the whole-process mechanization of cotton harvesting. Aiming at solving the problems of high plucking rate and scattered spreading of cotton stalk in the process of pulling, a kind of front mounted belt clamping and conveying cotton-stalk pulling device was designed based on the principle of belt clamping and conveying. The cotton-stalk pulling device consisted of a front suspension device, dividers, a pulling and conveying device, and a hydraulic system. The pulling and conveying device was the key part of the device. It pulled out cotton stalks by belt clamping, then, the belt transported the stalks to one side of the machine. A quadratic regression orthogonal test with three factors and three levels was carried on, with cotton-stalk leakage rate and cotton-stalk plucking rate as response values, with forward speed, driving wheel speed, and tensional amount as the influence factors, and parameters were optimized. The results showed that the forward speed had significant effect on the cotton-stalk plucking rate, the driving wheel speed and the tensional amount had highly significant effects on the cotton-stalk plucking rate (P<0.01). While the forward speed, the driving wheel speed and the tensional amount had highly significant effects on the cotton-stalk leakage rate (P<0.01). The optimal parameter combination was forward speed of 2.27km/h, tensional amount of 71.26mm, and driving wheel speed of 244.98r/min. According to the result of field verification test, under the working condition of the forward speed was 2km/h, the tensional amount was 70mm, and the driving wheel speed was 250r/min, the cotton-stalk plucking rate was 3.67% and the cotton-stalk leakage rate was 5.32%. The test results showed that the theoretical results were coincident with the measuring results, and the error between them was less than 5%. The study results can provide references for the development and improvement of cotton whole-stalk pulling device.