AUTOMATIC LEVELING CONTROL SYSTEM FOR COMBINE

In harvesting rice and barley using combine, the inclination of the body caused by the irregular surface condition of the field and the soil sinking from the unbalanced weight during the grain collection used to make harvesting operation difficult and even impossible. To overcome such a problem, automatic leveling control system for a combine has been developed and tested. The system was composed of the sensor for measuring left and right inclination of the combine chassis and the hydraulic control system. The adaptability of the control system was investigated by analyzing system response in time domain. And the limit angle of the leveling control was set up to be +/- 7$^{\circ}$. The proposed control and hydraulic power system was implemented to the prototype combine. The prototype combine was designed and built as a separable structure with chassis and track. This paper shows results of the leveling performance tested in the laboratory and the grain field.