Abstract:In response to the problems of high grass crushing rate and large stem breakage loss during the cutting and conditioning process of alfalfa, focusing on the initial flowering stage of alfalfa, the influence of stem bending angle during the conditioning process on the stem breakage rate of alfalfa was analyzed. A conditioning roller with hexagonal roller teeth was designed based on the geometry and force relationship of the conditioning process, and the effects of the number of roller teeth, conditioning roller speed, and roller gap on conditioning rate, conditioningloss rate, and stem breakage rate were analyzed based on quadratic regression response surface experiment. The conditioning effect of hexagonal roller teeth was verified through drying tests. The results indicated that the bending rate of the stem was influenced by the gap between rollers and the breakage angle of the stem. When the gap was fixed, the breakage rate of the stem was decreased as the bending angle was increased. When the bending angle of the stem was constant, the smaller the gap was, the greater the breakage rate of the stem was. When bending angle was greater than 140°, the breakage rate of the stem was less than 10%.The optimal number of roller teeth, roller speed, and roller clearance for the conditioning roller were 6, 750r/min, and 1.61mm, respectively. The experimental results under this parameter showed conditioning rate of 97.12%, conditioning loss rate of 1.40%, and stem fracture rate of 1.79%. Under natural drying conditions of 28~31℃, the average drying rates of mixed damage were 1.43 times and 1.97 times higher than those of compression damage and bending damage within 0~30minutes, respectively. In the drying experiment, the average qualities changes rates of alfalfa conditioned with the conditioning roller within 0~30minutes were 1.53g and 5.36g, respectively, which showed better drying effect than the traditional conditioning roller.