Res. Agr. Eng., 2012, 58(4):148-154 | DOI: 10.17221/33/2012-RAE

Analysis of strength ratio of different hop strings

P. Heřmánek¹, A. Rybka¹, I. Honzík¹, L. Vent², B. Jošt¹, J. Mašek¹

¹ Department of Agricultural Machines, Faculty of Engineering, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

² CHMEL-Vent Ltd., Podbořany-Kněžice, Czech Republic

In plant-growing, minimization of impurities in the final product plays a more and more important role. One of the risky places that can influence the final purity of granules in hop growing is the way of hop strings hanging on the trellis supporting wire. The ideal state is when hop-field supporting wires stay clean and without any attachments after the hop vines had been pulled down. The article deals with different variants of hop strings hanging, a description of the measuring equipment, and a measurement of the pulling force itself at a field test, and a realization of break tests in laboratory conditions with both new and used wires and twines. Two-year results of field tests proved advantageousness of the hop string hanging variant in combination of a black annealed wire of 1.06 mm in diameter with a polypropylene twine of strength labelled as 12,500 in the form of a simple attachment, as well as variants combining the same wire and a jute twine labelled 2,200 × 2 in the form of a double attachment. Other variants using attachments made of jute or sisal are unsuitable due to a large number of fallen hopvines in vegetation period. Paper attachments will be put to further tests.

Keywords: pulling down; hops; wire; twine

Published: December 31, 2012  Show citation