Design Orchard Wastes Shredder for Smallholders Using ANSYS

Abstract

Compost has the main role of organic farming in Egypt, its demand rapidly increased. But for small-scale orchards, it is a problem, many Egyptian orchards are small farms (≤ 0.5 ha), suffering from the lack of small-size shredders. Wastes particle size has an impact on the compost industry. Therefore the main object of this project was to design and manufacture a shredder, produce uniform raw material proper for making good compost in a short time. The prototype shredder could control the thickness of shredded orchard wastes according to the needs of compost producers to recycle orchard wastes (max. 5 cm diameter). The shredder machine consists of a frame, hopper, cutting shaft, cutting support, 2 pulleys, belt, and motor. The main part is the cutting shaft and the cutting support which gives the ability to control the thickness of shredded waste. Ansys program was used to analyze the shear stress, total deformation, equivalent stress (Von Mises) to choose the proper material of the cutting shaft to do such an operation. The maximum shear stress, equivalent stress, and displacement deformation on the wood bulk were obtained using stainless steel material, followed by cast iron then structure steel, for that the recommended material for the shaft was structure steel and for the cutting knives was stainless steel. The cutting support is flexible to have the desired thickness of the cut material, but the study focused to get 2 mm thickness according to the compost expertise demand, but the machine could cut the wastes up to 4 mm thickness. the shredder machine operation was to feed the orchards wastes (tree branches max. 5 cm diameter) to a hopper at 45^o angle between the adjustable support (protruding), and the shaft with sharp cutting fixed knives, to cut the wastes depended on the shear stress between the wood and the knives, then the cut pieces will grumbling down by the shaft acceleration and gravity in the bottom of the shredder to be collected later.