Agricultural Engineering

MEASURING CUTTING RESISTANCE OF SUGARCANE STALKS

Cheu-Shang Chang
Departamento de Engenharia Agricola, Universidade Estadual de
Campinas, SP, Brazil
ABSTRACT
Cutting resistance is a composite characteristic. It is not only
related to certain mechanical properties of the cane stalk but also
affected by knife geometry and cutting speed. Information on this is
important in designing and improving a sugarcane harvester, but
such data are not available and to estimate them by existing standard
measuring methods is difficult. This study suggests using a special
impact cutting test with an actual knife blade. The preliminary results
indicated that the cutting force distribution, shown by oscilloscope
photographs, has a heavy skin effect on both sides of the stalk. The
average cutting resistance per unit diameter of the first internode,
using a knife blade with an edge sharpness angle of 14O and thickness
of 3.06 mm, is from 3.55 to 6.10 kgflcm which varies with the location
on the stalk. The optimum maximum cutting speed at the moment of
impact is about 6 mlsec for a stalk diameter of 3.5 cm.
"4

INTRODUCTION

The common concept of cutting sugarcane stalks is to apply impact force with a whipping knife by hand or high rotating speed of a circular knife
blade by mechanical power. Harvesting sugarcane by hand is hard work. An
average, experienced laborer can cut about 2 tons/day with stalks from
12 mm to 50 mm in diameter. A modern cane harvester, equipped with
112 kw to 186 kw engine has a harvesting capacity of 15-40 tons/hr. To
improve the efficiency of a sugarcane harvester and minimize the power consumption, it is always necessary to know the cutting resistance of the sugarcane stalk. Cutting resistance is not only related to certain mechanical properties of the material to be cut, but is also affected by the sharpness of the
knife blade. For this reason, a knife blade for the base cutter used in Brazil is
recommended to be replaced every working week. In addition, cutting resistance can be a function of cutting speed. An impact load or shock load
applied to a material usually encounters less resistance. A hand whipping
knife may accelerate to a maximum velocity of 8 m/sec; a base cutter
rotates at a tip speed of from, 20 to 30 in/sec (4000 to 6000 ft/min)
(Clayton, 1974). The mechanical properties involved in cutting are shear
stress, compressive stress and friction between the knife surface and the
stalk. Cochran and others (1970), in Louisiana, have measured the tensile
and compressive stress of cane stalks, but no information on shear stress
and friction is available. In reality, estimating cutting resistance by measuring
classical mechanical properties is difficult. For making a preliminary study,
this paper suggests a direct measuring method that estimates cutting resistance by using an actual cutter and applying an impact force.

AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING

FIGURE 1 . Impact cutting test device consists

of rotating hammer with load torsional spring,
control trigger, knife cutter, dynamometer and
solar cell.
CONSTRUCTION OF THE. MEASURING DEVICE

For modifying the hand cutting method, a special impact cutting device
was designed as shown in Fig. 1. It consists of a steel hammer of one kg
weight with an adjustable arm (25 cm). In order to gain high impact force,
a strong torsional spring made of music wire with a coil diameter of 2.5 cm
was used. Three different sizes of wire were adopted. They were Nos. G7,
G8 and G9, with diameters of 4.36 mm (0.1770"), 3.97 mm (0.1620")
and 3.63 mm (0.1483") respectively. The knife cutter used for this study
is shown in Fig. 2.

kt

FIGURE 2 . Knife cutter, thickness

edge sharpness 14O.

(1/8"),

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C.S. CHANG

The thickness of the knife is 3.06 mm (1/8") with an edge sharpness

angle #of 140 and a weight of 396 g. The hammer shown in Fig. 1
is in load position, held by a trigger. The irnpact fmorce is -obtained
by releasing the trigger. The hammer strikes the knife head and forces the
knife blade to penetrate the sample stalk. The latter is freely supported by
two pieces of angle iron with a knife - pass clearance of 1 cm. The cutting
force was measured by a specially designed strain gauge dynamometer with
a natural response frequency of 6,500 cycles/sec. The penetration distance
was measured by a solar cell and a microscopic lamp. The cutting force,
together with penetration distance and time, were separately recorded by
two oscilloscopes (Tektronix type C-27) and photographed. Samples of
the recording photographs of F - t and F - x are shown in Fig. 3.

FIGURE 3 . Oscilloscope tracings (sample G7 bottom). Upper: cutting forcetime curve (F-t). Force scale - 9.4 kgf/
div. Time scale - Zms./div. Lower:
cutting force - penetration depth curve
(F-x). Force scalc 10 kgf/div. Depth
scale - 0.76 cm/div.
EQUATIONS TO BE CONSIDERED

The total potential energy (E) released by the hammer, for cutting, is
calculated as follows :

Converting the potential egergy into kinetic energy, and ignoring the
moment of inertia of the rotating arm (5/8" tube) the maximum velocity
(V,,,,) at the moment of impact can be obtained as follows.

AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING

From the measuring data, the average cutting velocity ( ~ a )can be

determined:

The average cutting resistance per unit diameter was measured and is defined
as follows:

<"!,:,

The cutting efficiency (Eff) is then determined:

Eff =

100
-

D
0

i
LIST OF SYMBOLS

= Diameter of the sample cane stalk

=. Total potential energy in kgf - cm

Eff

= Cutting efficiency in per cent

F ( t ) = Measured cutting force as a function of the time of knife penetration in kgf

F ( x ) = Measured cutting force as a function of the distance of knife
penetration in kgf

K
I

= Torsional spring constant

for G7 : 2 8 . 1 kgf - cm/rad
G8 : 1 9 . 7
G9 : 1 3 . 0

I
I

*X

37

"

"

59

=. Mass of the hammer (1/98 1 kg)

= Average cutting resistance per unit diameter in kgf/cm

= Time in sec.

V,

= Average cutting velocity during cutting in m/sec.

I
I

Vmax = Maximum velocity at the moment of impact in m/sec.

=, Weight of the hammer (1 kgf)

01,02 = Initial and final angle oI torsional spring.

SAMPLE SELECTION

The test was conducted at the University of Singapore, on samples

which were selected from a farm in Malaysia. It was not possible to determine the exact variety. Only the first internode (above the ground) was
taken for the test. Three cuts were measured for each sample; one cut at the
bottom (close to the growth ring), one in the middle and the other in the
upper part (close to the wax ring) in order to avoid mass sampling. A simple
pin penetrometer, as shown in Fig. 4, was used to indicate the hardness which
was measured for each section of cut and made it possible to compare with
other stalks and other varieties. It was found that the pin penetration
reading had a significant correlation with the cutting resistance for oil palm
stalk (Chang et a1 1973), but no correlation has been found for compressive stress. The pin penetrometer reading (the pin shown in Fig. 4 was used)
for the cane stalk in Singapore and Malaysia was found to be around 3-8 kg;
a similar range was found for cane stalk in SFio Paulo, Brazil (Varieties : NA5662, CB 4114). The hardness was found to be different for
different parts of thk stalk. Usually, the bottom part of the stalk is harder
than the top.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
' The sample pictures of measured graphs shown in Fig. 3 indicate that
the cutting force was affected by the shock wave of the dynamometer.
Therefore the peak of the graph does not shown the true peak of the cutting
force, but the average Iorce on the graph does show the true average cutting
force since the average effect of the shock wave is zero.

FIGURE 4 . Shape of penetrator pin traced from optical screen.

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AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING

The cutting force distribution of Fig. 3 also indicates that the peak
resistance of the canestalk occurs on both sides of the stalk instead ol in
the middle of the cross section. This is due to the high resistance of the
rind.
The hardness indicatetd by the pin penetrometer as shown in Table I
has good correlation with cutting energy (energy absorbed) and cutting
resistance. However the detailed relationship requires further statistical study.
TABLE 1. Results of impact cutting test (for the first internode only).
I
I
I
I
SAMPLES
G7
68
G9

**

upper

,M

= middle, B = bottom

The hardness m s t a k e n by a pin as shown in Fig. 4 at a

penetration depth o f 20 mm.

The results showed that the most economical maximum velocity at the
moment of impact should be about 6 m/sec which gives a good cutting
efficiency of above 30%. There is no indication that the cutting resistance
is reduced by increasing the maximum impact velocity above 6 m/sec;
below 5 m/sec the impact energy is not sufficient to cut through the stalk.
The overall results showed that the maximum efficiency of hand cutting is
not more than 37%, which is very low.

C.S. CHANG

The first internode (from the ground) has a unit cutting resistance of
from 3.55 kgf/cm to 6;l kgf/cm and varies with location on the stalk. The
results indicate that the highest cutting resistance is located close to the
growth ring.
REFERENCES

1 . Cochran B.J., and Baker, Gene. (1970). Engineering properties of Sugar Cane
and their Relationship to Mechanical Harvesting. ASAE paper no. 70359.
2 . Chang C.S. Ming Loo et a / . (1973). Oil palm Harvester. Technical Report, University of Singapore (unpublished).
3 . Clayton Joe E. (October 1974). High-speed photography of Sugar Cane Harvesting. Journal Sugar & Aziicar.

MEDIDAS DE LA RESISTENCIA AL CORTE DE TALLOS

DE CARA DE AZUCAR
C.S. Chang
RESUMEN
La resistencia al corte es una caracteristica compleja. No esta
relacionada s o l q ~ e n t econ algunas propriedades mecanicas del tallo
de la cafia como tambien es afectada por la geometria del cuchillo
y la velocidad del corte. Informaciones sobre esto son importantes
para el diseAo y mejoramiento de cosechadoras de cafia per0 estos
datos no estan disponibles y ademas es dificil estimarlos con 10s metodos estandartizados de mensuracion. Este estudio sugiere el uso
de un teste especial de corte por impacto con un cuchillo. bos resullados preliminares indican que la distribuci6n de la fuerza de corte,
axaminada por fotos de oscilloscopio, sufre un fuerte efecto de la
cascara en ambos lados del tallo. El promedio de resistencia al corte
por unidad de diametro del primer entrenudo, cuando se usa un
cuchillo con angulo de lamina de 1 4 . O y espesura de 3.06 mm, es de
3.55 hasta 6.10 kgflcm variando conforme la localization en el tallo.
La velocidad optima de corte en el momento del impacto es de cerca
6 mlseg. para un diametro de tallo de 3.5 cm.