Abstract
Owing to their sharp teeth, crickets can eat through new shoots of the stalks of tea plants. Inspired by the special geometrical structure of the teeth of crickets, this study designed a biomimetic cutter to reduce the force and energy required to cut the stalks of tea plants. Therefore, four biomimetic cutters were considered: a, b, c, and d. Cutter a was a traditional cutter used for comparison with the other three cutters, which were biomimetic. The cutters were manufactured using 3D printing technology and assessed by a texture tester at different loading speeds (5, 10, and 15 mm/s, respectively). The results show that cutter c delivered better performance compared to cutter a at loading speeds of 5, 10, and 15 mm/s, respectively. However, at 15 mm/s loading speed, the maximum cutting forces required for cutters b and c were 9.43% and 6.04% lower, respectively, than that for cutter a (9.021 N). Similarly, the energies consumed by cutters b and c were 13.8% and 4.24% lower than that consumed by cutter a (1.225 J). In addition, cutter c delivered the best results compared to others. Based on the study results, it was concluded that the biomimetic cutters can thus help to optimize the tea harvest.
Highlights
Tea is an aromatic beverage that is consumed all over the world [1]
Based on the above discussion, the present paper examines the structural parameters of cutters for harvesting tea plants based on biomimetic technology
That the genetic techniques are becoming available for crickets [37], it could be expected that more advances will occur in the future studies of the model system of crickets
Summary
Tea is an aromatic beverage that is consumed all over the world [1]. Tea pluckers are widely used to improve the yield of harvesting tea plants [2, 3]. The cutter is a key component of the tea plucker that has a significant influence on its cutting performance and efficiency [4, 5]. Used cutters in tea pluckers include the reciprocating cutter, disk cutter, and flail-type cutter. Compared with the disk and flail-type cutters, the reciprocating cutter has a simpler structure and a wider range of adaptations [6,7,8]. It is important to optimize the structural parameters of the reciprocating cutter to improve its cutting performance
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