Abstract
Shock and vibration inputs are transmitted from the vehicle through the packaging to the fruit. Inside, these cause sustained bouncing of fruits against each other and container wall. These steady state vibration input may cause serous fruit injury, and this damage is particularly severe whenever the fruit inside the package is free to bounce, and is vibrated at its resonance frequency. The determination of the resonance frequencies of the fruit and vegetables may help the packaging designer to determine the proper packaging system providing adequate protection for the fruit, and to understand the complex interaction between the components of fruit when they relate to expected transportation vibration inputs. Instrumentation and technologies are described for determining the vibration response characteristics of the pears for exporting with frequency range from 10 to 200 Hz, sweep rate of 1 octave/min, sweep method of logarithmic up and down and acceleration levels of 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 G considering the domestic transportation environment. The resonance frequency of the pears ranged from 49.04 to 87.16 Hz and the amplitude at resonance was between 0.96 and 4.02 G in test frequency band and acceleration level. The resonance frequency and amplitude at resonance frequency band of the pears decreased with the increase of the sample mass. The multiple nonlinear regression equations for predicting the resonance frequency of the pears were developed using the independent variables such as mass, input acceleration.
