Design, construction, and evaluation of a shaking track equipped with flexible arms

Forozandehnasab, Mojtaba; Rahimi Asiabaraki, Hosein

doi:10.48301/vjtve.2026.540653.1136

Design, construction, and evaluation of a shaking track equipped with flexible arms

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Mojtaba Forozandehnasab

Hosein Rahimi Asiabaraki

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical and Vocational University (TVU), Tehran, Iran.

10.48301/vjtve.2026.540653.1136

Abstract

This study was conducted to design, construct, and evaluate a vibratory apple harvesting machine. The natural frequency, damping constant, damping coefficient, and stiffness of the branch are determined based on mechanical properties. In the next step, to evaluate the efficiency of the machine in terms of apple detachment, a factorial experiment (3 × 3) with a completely randomized design was conducted to investigate the amplitude and frequency for apple detachment. Three levels of frequency (4, 9, and 20 Hz) and three levels of amplitude (20, 32, and 40 mm) were investigated. Analysis of the variance of fruit detachment based on Duncan 5% shows that shaking frequency and shaking amplitude both have a highly significant effect on fruit detachment. The effects of shaking frequency and amplitude were both significant on fruit detachment, but no interacting effects were observed. The most suitable shaking frequency and amplitude for harvesting apples were 9 Hz and 40 mm, respectively, which resulted in a 94.37% fruit detachment rate. The static pulling force required to detach the fruit from the branch decreases with an increase in fruit mass or geometric size. The ratio of the static detachment force to fruit weight was determined to vary between 5.1 and 15.3 for the apple investigated. Therefore, in apple harvesting, the effect of increasing the shaking amplitude relative to the shaking frequency on fruit detachment was concluded. Applying oscilation for 8 seconds increased harvesting, but increasing the time from 8 seconds to above that did not significantly affect the outcome.

Keywords

Amplitude

frequency

harvesting apple

shaker

vibration

Subjects

Mechanical Engineering

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