Physical and Mechanical Properties of Sweet Corn Plant

Abstract

Physical and mechanical properties are important issues to be studied due to its importance in the design of agricultural equipment and its relationship to the production operation. The average physical properties for weight, length, diameter, volume, porosity, repose angle, and angle of friction of sweet corn cobs and some of their components were measured. Moreover, the average mechanical properties for pulling force at three different angles ( 0,  45 and 90 )degree where at 90 degree gave the lowest value of pulling force of corn cobs which was 51.14± 1.97 N, compression force at vertical 497.56± 63.14 N; at horizontal 2801.26± 346.10 N, shearing force at two different angles ( 0 and 45 ) degree where at 45 gave the lowest value of shearing force of corn cobs which was 448.27± 34.03 N, and penetration 1.633± 0.144 N of sweet corn cobs and some of their components were measured. In addition, the physical properties of sweet corn plant for height of plant 211.7 ± 3.62 cm, width of plant 96.0 ± 2.17 cm, diameter of stalk at 20 cm from ground 2.21 ± 0.089 cm, weight of complete plant with root 0.833 ± 0.0491 kg, leaves 0.077 ± 0.0018 kg, stalk 0.318 ± 0.0094 kg, corncobs 0.420 ± 0.0315 kg and roots 0.068 ± 0.0017 kg, moisture content of leaves 56.22 ± 5.10 %, stalk 79.54 ± 2.14 % and roots 62.33 ± 3.85 %, and the average mechanical properties for pulling force at 0 degree 549.32± 6.27 N; at 45 degree 400.19± 3.05 N; 90º 334.00± 3.09 N, and shearing force at 0 degree 205.45± 20.59 N; at 45 degree 167.15± 25.10 N of the plant were conducted. These outcomes indicated possibility its utilization in design agriculture machine to determine standards of design machine.