Design of a Dual Operated Cassava Chipper
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Date
2017
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
European Mechanical Science
Abstract
Size reduction of agricultural products is an essential requirement for their processing and transportation.This research designed and fabricated a manually operated and motorised cassava chipping machine, whichis adaptable to the local farmers at the cottage level. The design was carried out by empirically computingthe threshold force required for cutting the cassava tubers, with a prior knowledge of the length (350 mm)and thickness (1.5 mm) of the cutting blades as influencing indexes. Also, the capacity of the machine wasevaluated using six different cutting forces above and below the cutting threshold force (68.99 N). The resultsshow that the cutting force increased exponentially with the length and diameter of the tuber. Also, less forcewas required to chip cassava tuber with longer length and shorter diameter probably due to the presence ofinner and central crack defects, which is capable of forming easy crack initiation points with the slightestblade effort. The size of the electric motor required was a single phase 1 hp (4500 rpm), which is capable ofpowering the machine to an approximate capacity of 225 kg/h and comparable to the required human effort.The machine was also found effective in chipping cassava tuber to average size of 30 mm.