An evaluation of the physical, dynamic and aerodynamic properties of olives

Abstract

The determination of the physical and mechanical properties of agricultural products has always been considered as the basis for the design and fabrication of transmission, grading, and processing equipment for agricultural products. Due to the increasing production of olives and the foreign exchange earnings from its trade, the mechanisation of harvesting and processing operations is inevitable. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the physical, dynamic and aerodynamic properties of olive species in order to design and fabricate an olive oiling machine. In this research, four species of olives, namely the Manzanilla, Kalamata, Fishemi, and Oily, were used. The physical properties of the samples were completely different. The mean dimensions of the Manzanilla species are the largest and the Oily is smallest and were the inverse in relation to the sphericity index. To determine the mechanical properties of the samples, the test material was used at a speed of 8 mm·min–1. The results showed that the maximum and minimum power and energy of rupture were allocated to the Manzanilla and Oily species, respectively. The Oily samples have the most mechanical sensitivity when compared to the other samples. The aerodynamic properties of the olive species were measured using a wind tunnel. The highest velocity and drag coefficient were assigned to the Oily sample and the lowest values were assigned to the Kalamata sample.

Engineering properties of the cashew nut in context of designing post-harvest handling and processing machinery

“…The randomly selected cashew nut samples (n = 100) were evaluated by the Mohsenin method (Mohsenin 1986) using Equations (1-8). This measurement method is used by many researchers (Abedi et al 2019;Ahangarnezhad et al 2019;Akbarnia and Rashvand 2019) to determine the geometric diameter, arithmetic diameter, surface area, frontal surface area, transverse area, coefficient of the contact surface, shape index, and sphericity. The shape of the cashew nut was observed visually and compared with the standard conditions given by the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (Nayak et al 2014).…”