1990 Volume 52 Issue 5 Pages 69-77
In the first installment, the application of the finite element inverse analysis to parameter estimation of mechanical properties of agricultural materials has been reported. It was confirmed based on a numerical experiment that the installation of the finite element program in the analysing system was effective. In the second installment, the main discussion wes focussed on the measuring system that provided data which would be fed into the analyzing system. The verification of the main system performance was made by test runs using actual vegetative materials.
In this final installment, the total evaluation of this developed system was discussed. The identification process of the water potential effect coefficient of vegetative material was summerized. The fuzzy Young's modulus was defined to model the stochastic nature of vegetative materials. The system was put into practical operation for the tasks on determination of the mechanical properties of vegetative materials. The fuzzy Young's moduli, the Poisson's ratios, and the water potential effect coefficenets were determined with several varieties of vegetables including some vegetables with difficulties in handling in conventional measuring methods such as green peppers (sweet peppers) and onions.
