Cutting mechanical properties of sisal leaves under rotary impact cutting

Abstract

The objective of this work was to investigate the effect of cutting parameters on the cutting performance of sisal leaves under the impact cutting and to obtain the optimal cutting parameters to reduce cutting force and cutting energy. A rotary cutting method for sisal leaves was proposed, and the experimental results showed that cutting parameters had a significant impact on the ultimate shear stress and the specific cutting energy of sisal leaves. Increasing the cutting speed helps to reduce the ultimate shear stress and the specific cutting energy, but the specific cutting energy will increase when the cutting speed is greater than 3 m/s. Meanwhile, under the leaf elevation angle of 45° and the blade oblique angle of 40°, the minimum average ultimate shear stress (7.03 × 10−2 MPa) and minimum specific cutting energy (2.49 × 10−3 J/mm2) were achieved at the cutting speeds of 5 m/s and 3 m/s, respectively. Besides, the lowest cutting cross-section splitting degree was achieved under the blade oblique angle of 40°. The experiment results show that the cutting method proposed in this paper is effective, which provides an important basis for improving the current sisal leaf-cutting device and developing economic sisal leaves harvesting equipment in the future.