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At present, ginkgo nut shellers have many problems, such as low shelling rate and high damage rate. To address these problems, a multifunctional ginkgo nut sheller was designed. The equipment had functions for shell breaking, shelling, and separation of shell from the kernel. The influencing factors of the shelling process were analyzed. A three-factor two-level response surface test was conducted, and mathematical models for the response surface were established. The influence of each factor on the operation quality was analyzed, and a combination of parameters was optimized. The experimental results showed that the factors in the order of importance of their influence on shelling rate was as follows: feeding rate, chainplate speed, and shelling gap. The factors in the order of importance of their influence on damage rate was as follows: shelling gap, chainplate speed, and feeding rate. The results of the interaction analysis conducted showed that the interaction between the chainplate speed and shelling gap had the highest significant effect on the shelling rate, followed by the interaction between the feeding rate and chainplate speed. The interaction between the chainplate speed and shelling gap had a significant effect on damage rate. The interaction between the other factors had no significant effect on shelling and damage rates. The optimal combination of parameters was as follows: the feeding rate was 30.2 g/s, the chainplate speed was 0.48 m/s, and the shelling gap was 12.3 mm. The optimal combination was employed, and the validation test resulted in a shelling rate of 98.02% and damage rate of 4.45%. The relative error between the measured and theoretical values was less than 5%, indicating that the models were reliable. This study can provide a reference for subsequent research on shelling equipment of ginkgo nut. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collision of falling in the mechanical harvesting process of sweet potato is one of the main causes of epidermal destruction and damage to sweet potato tubers. Therefore, a sweet potato mechanical characteristic test and a full-factor sweet potato drop test were designed. Based on the analysis of the fitting mathematical model, the impact of the drop height, collision material and sweet potato chunk size on the damage of the sweet potato were studied. The mathematical models were established by fitting analysis of the IBM SPSS Statistics 22 software between the drop height and the sweet potato chunk size with each test index (impact force, impact stress, broken skin area and damaged area). The critical epidermal destruction height and the critical damage height of a certain size of sweet potato when it collides with a collision material can be calculated by the mathematical model, and the critical epidermal destruction mass and critical damage mass of sweet potato when it falls from a certain height and collides with a collision material can also be calculated. Then a series of critical values (including critical epidermal destruction force value, critical epidermal destruction impact stress, critical damage force value, critical damage impact stress) of mechanical properties of sweet potato were obtained. The results show that the impact deformation of sweet potato includes both elastic and plastic ones, and has similar stress relaxation characteristics. The critical damage impact stress of sweet potato is that the average value of the impact stress on the contact surface is less than it's Firmness. The results provided a theoretical basis for understanding the collision damage mechanism of sweet potato and how to reduce the damage during harvest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]