Design and Experiment of Nondestructive Post-Harvest Device for Tomatoes

Linlu Zu, Mingzheng Han, Jiuqin Liu, Pingzeng Liu, Tianhua Li and Fei Su ()
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Linlu Zu: College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an 271018, China
Mingzheng Han: College of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an 271018, China
Jiuqin Liu: College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an 271018, China
Pingzeng Liu: Key Laboratory of Huang-Huai-Hai Smart Agricultural Technology, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tai’an 271018, China
Tianhua Li: College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an 271018, China
Fei Su: College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an 271018, China

Agriculture, 2022, vol. 12, issue 8, 1-19

Abstract: This paper proposed a whole process tomato harvester with a nondestructive post-harvest collection operation mode, which was aimed to solve the high damage rate problem during the automatic greenhouse tomato harvesting process. The post-harvest device mainly included the net bag mechanism, the conveying and collecting mechanism, whose structure and materials were carefully designed to satisfy the nondestructive collection principle. Numerical simulation was done to evaluate the damage under three working conditions, which showed that the peak contact stress of tomatoes was 0.107 MPa, 0.098 MPa, and 0.11 MPa, respectively, all smaller than the damage stress of tomato peel tissue. In the postharvest prototype experiment, the degree of mechanical damage based on the shelf life of tomatoes during the color turning stage and red ripening stage was used as the evaluation index. Results showed that when tomatoes were dropped from the 60 mm higher position than the net bag mechanism, and the speed of the conveyor belt was 9 r min −1 , the degree of mechanical damage at the color turning stage and red ripening stage was 1.9% and 9.5%, respectively. The harvest time of greenhouse tomatoes was always around the color turning stage, thus the proposed device can well meet the agricultural requirements.

Keywords: nondestructive collection; tomato; numerical simulation; shelf life; damage rate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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