Design of the Mechanized Loose Fruits Collector for Oil Palm Plantation

Wong, Peng Hao (2023) Design of the Mechanized Loose Fruits Collector for Oil Palm Plantation. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology.

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Abstract

This project is to optimise on how to improve the collection effeciency of the previous loose fruit collector through project objectives, which is to design and develop a fruit collecting mechanism for a motorised power barrow, determine and select suitable material for robust prototype fabrication, build a prototype for proof of concepts, and perform FEA simulation which included static analysis, dynamic analysis, and failure analysis. The initial loose fruit collector used a roller type sweeper to perform the fruit collecting process which the roller type sweeper had been studied through various of studies and observation of the Scavenger performance in Genting Plantation site. However, different types of road surfaces experiments were conducted with the roller type sweeper and the highest percentage is 73.3% in total number of 30 fruits. With the test result from roller type sweeper, a new conceptual design of chain and sprocket is introduced as the new sweeping mechanism which is to overcome the difficulties faced by the roller type sweeper. For the chain and sprocket type sweeper, relevant research papers are studied such as transferring system, chain and sprocket mechanism, components selection and so on. The material selection of the collector also selected for robust prototype fabrication. With the information studied from the studies and the data from previous collector, a prototype is constructed for proof of concepts. Various calculation such as tension force, torque, and power are done. The results of the experiment on various ground surface and conditions were used to establish and determine the prototype efficiency and the percentage of loose fruit collection. According to the results, the prototype has an increase of percentage of 94% in collection of loose fruit in total number of 86. The FEA simulation is conducted on the static, dynamic and failure analysis of the components in the prototype. In the static analysis, it is found that most of the components do not yield when properly loaded however the factor of safety is higher than usual benchmark of the factor of safety. Hence, optimization on each of the components is needed to reduce the value of the factor of safety on each of the components.