Analysis of the collision-damage susceptibility of sweet cherry related to environment temperature: A numerical simulating method

Abstract

Sweet cherry is extremely susceptible to collision damage during post-harvest handling. Fruit-to-rigid surface and fruit-to-fruit collision systems were modeled by the dynamic FE method and the sweet cherry model included three parts: exocarp, mesocarp, and pit. A fruit-to-rigid surface horizontal collision testbed was newly developed to validate the prediction accuracy of the fruit FE model. It was found that the fruit model inputting the average elastic moduli and failure stress of the fruit tissues can reproduce the experimental maximum impact force and contact time in the compression stage with the relative error of 1.58 and 1.87%, respectively. Three mathematical models were proven to be capable of quantitatively assessing the internal damage degree of sweet cherry by three independent variables: collision type, initial fruit velocity, and environment temperature. This study shows an effective numerical simulation approach for objectively predicting the horizontal collision-damage susceptibility of sweet cherry and other fresh fruit in postharvest damage-prevention strategy analysis. • • Fruit FE model can reproduce two collision experimental mechanical parameters. • • Fruit damage volume increased nonlinearly with the collision contact time. • • The velocity change of the local tissue in fruit during collision was presented. • • The degree of fruit collision damage can be predicted by the obtained models. • • Collision type was the most key factor affecting the fruit damage susceptibility.