Abstract:Aiming to address the issue that the threshing and separation device of traditional soybean combine harvesters cannot adjust the threshing gap in real-time, resulting in uneven material distribution in the threshing chamber and consequently high rates of soybean grain breakage, unthreshed grain loss, and entrainment loss, an adjustment system was designed based on the realtime matching of feed rate and threshing gap. Using the feed rate, threshing section gap, and separation section gap as experimental factors, and the grain breakage rate, unthreshed grain rate, and entrainment loss rate as evaluation indicators, bench tests, adaptive threshing gap adjustment tests, and comparative tests were conducted. The experimental results indicated that the average adjustment errors of the control system for the threshing and separation section gap were 0.49mm and 0.47mm, respectively. Under the test combinations where the feed rates were 0~2kg/s, 2~3kg/s, and 3~4kg/s, with corresponding threshing section gaps of 15mm, 23mm and 30mm, and separation section gaps of 15mm, 20mm and 27mm, the grain breakage rate, unthreshed grain rate, and entrainment loss rate were 2.73%, 0.30% and 0.42%, respectively. Compared with the constant gap tests, these values were reduced by 0.39, 0.27 and 0.28 percentage points, respectively. All evaluation indicators from the adaptive threshing gap adjustment tests outperformed those from the comparative tests. The research result can support the development of adaptive threshing gap control systems and the intelligent of the soybean combine harvester.