In terms of the shelling in peanut research for breeding and cultivation, the shelling machine is not only been required to be suitable to a small quantity of feeding, but also been required to decrease damage on peanuts and more efficiency and convenience of cleaning the sheller. At present, the shelling of peanuts used for domestic research plot mainly relies on manpower, which always caused “mixed” phenomena as treatments separated plot. In view of above issues, the scheme of peanut sheller with vertical tapered drum was proposed according to the latest study on the characteristics of the existed horizontal peanut hulling mechanisms. And the related design of integrated structure of this kind of sheller was brought out based on the vertical arrangement, including the hulling device, air suction cleaning device and transmission device. As the key components of the sheller, the tapered drum and the screen made up the hulling mechanism that had a great influence on hulling effect. The key components’ parameters were confirmed and the range of the parameter was determined by deeply theoretical analysis. According to the analysis, the responsible parameter interval of hulling device was selected. Taking “Silihong”, a variety of peanut as test material, the roller speed, semitaper angle of tapered drum and minimum hulling gap as the factors，the peanut removal rate and breakage rate were selected as experimental indexes. The response surface analysis method was used to test the machine performance. The results showed that when the rotating speed of the shelling drum was 340r/min, the semitaper angle of the drum was 40°, and the minimum hulling gap was 10mm, the comprehensive index of shelling was the best, the removal rate was 97.84%, and the breakage rate was 2.97%, which better matched the requirements of plot peanut shelling.