Harmonic stress analysis on Coffea arábica L. var. Colombia fruits in order to stimulate the selective detachment: A finite element analysis

This study shows a finite element harmonic stress analysis to evaluate the stress performance at the pedicel interface of a fruit–peduncle system of Coffea arábica L. var. Colombia plants. The aim was to study detachment of fruits subjected to mechanical vibrations. A model of the coffee fruit–peduncle system is designed computationally to reproduce its topology in all ripening stages using a proposed numerical procedure. Young’s modulus, Poisson ratio, and density were adjusted using analytical models for all ripening stages. The glomerulus of three fruits in different ripening stages was proposed and these were combined in four groups. Based on a detachment model, it was verified which fruit was detached first when a chirp force signal was applied on each glomerulus. Results indicated that dynamic excitations applied in between 130 to 150 Hz detached only ripe fruits, since fruits that were in other ripening stages were not stimulated until detachment in that bandwidth.