A Simulation of Optimum Power Requirements of a Cocoyam Chipper

Abstract

A power requirement model was simulated at three factor interaction of process variables in order to select a combination of optimum crop and machine variables (cutting velocity, chipping slot area and feed rate. The computer simulation programme was used to identify the minimum chip loss for the various combinations of process variables and power requirement. The results obtained from simulation revealed that a minimum chip loss of 0.1667 kg was obtained for the cocoyam chipper at 4.91 m/s cutting velocity, 0.0018 m 2 chipping slot area and 0.056 kg/s feed rate. The power requirement obtained at this level was 961.39 W. These results gave room for good comparison with a minimum chip loss value of 0.1682 kg and 963.54 W power requirement obtained from the actual measurement at the same values of the parameters for the cocoyam chipper.