Modeling and Optimizing the Performance of Green Forage Maize Harvester Header Using a Combined Response Surface Methodology–Artificial Neural Network Approach

Green forage maize harvesters face challenges such as high soil humidity and soft soil in the field, mismatched working parameters, and poor reliability and adaptability. These challenges often result in header blockage, significant harvest loss, and increased energy consumption. Traditional testing and statistical analysis methods used in most existing studies are limited by complex test processes, their time-consuming nature, high costs, and poor prediction accuracy. To address these problems, a test bench was constructed to analyze the effects of forward speed, cutting height, number of rows, and their interactions on specific energy consumption and harvest loss of the green forage maize (GFM) header. A combined response surface method (RSM)–artificial neural network (ANN) approach is proposed for modeling and predicting the performance parameters of the header. The optimal conditions were determined by optimizing the specific energy consumption and loss rate. The optimal combination parameters are a forward speed of 1.6 km/h, a cutting height of 167 mm, and a number of rows of 4. However, RSM–ANN has larger R2 values and lower root mean square errors (RMSE) and mean square errors (MSE) compared to RSM. Specifically, the R2 of the RSM–ANN model for specific energy consumption and loss rate a 0.9925 and 0.9906, MSE are 0.00001775 and 0.004558, and RMSE are 0.004214 and 0.006752, respectively. The results show that the combined RSM–ANN method has higher precision and accuracy and can better predict and optimize the header performance. This study overcomes the limitations of traditional methods and has the potential to provide data and method references for the design, optimization, prediction, and intelligent diagnosis of faults in the operational parameters of agricultural machinery.