Research in Agricultural Engineering, 65, 2019 (2): 33–39 Original Paper

https://doi.org/10.17221/122/2017-RAE

Determination of the physical and mechanical properties

of a potato (the Agria variety) in order to mechanise
the harvesting and post-harvesting operations
Negar Ahangarnezhad 1*, Gholamhassan Najafi 1, Ahmad Jahanbakhshi 2
1
Department of Mechanic Engineering of Biosystems, Faculty of Agriculture,
Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering of Biosystems, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources,
University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran
*Corresponding author: [email protected]

Citation: Ahangarnezhad N., Najafi G., Jahanbakhshi A. (2019): Determination of the physical and mechanical properties of
a potato (the Agria variety) in order to mechanise the harvesting and post-harvesting operations. Res. Agr. Eng., 65: 33–39.

Abstract: Studying the physical and mechanical properties of agricultural products has been the subject of criticism
and discussion for many years already and has attracted the attention of many researchers. The physical and mechani-
cal properties of agriculture products are the most important parameters in the design of agricultural machinery
sorting systems, transmissions, processing and packaging systems. The potato is one of the most important agricul-
tural products as a food resource. The aim of this research is to investigate the physical properties and mechanical
behaviour of the potato due to its importance and the current inadequate information about it. In this research,
some of the physical and mechanical properties of the potato were measured in standard conditions. The length,
width, thickness, geometric mean diameter and arithmetical diameter, sphericity, surface area, aspect ratio, mass,
volume, bulk density and the projected mean area were included in the physical properties. The mechanical proper-
ties of the potato were determined by using a universal testing machine (MRT-5; Santam, Germany) with a uniaxial
compression test. Then, the mechanical properties were measured with four repetitions. The physical properties of
the potato such as length, width, thickness, mass, volume and geometric mean diameter had a direct relationship,
while the density had an inverse relation to the size. The result of the mechanical properties of the sample, such as
vertical stress, elasticity module, deformation energy, fracture force and deformation were obtained respectively as
0.34 MPa, 3.09 MPa, 892.02 J, 8.80 N and 207.22 mm. The comparison of the potato’s real volume with the standard
shapes showed that the potato’s shape is similar to an oval due to the largest determination coefficient (R2 = 0.86).
The results of this research can be used for the design and optimisation of the processing equipment, as well as the
transporting, sorting and packing of the potato crop.

Keywords: potato; engineering properties; post-harvest operations; waste control

The potato with the scientific name of Solanum changing factors. These processes may be simple
tuberosum is ranked as the fourth most important operations such as cleaning, separating, washing,
product after wheat, rice and corn. Potatoes are full displacement and weighing and or conversion pro-
of starch, protein and potassium and are considered cesses. So, the determination of the different physi-
as high caloric products (Öztürk, Polat 2016). cal and mechanical properties of the agriculture
Agriculture products from the harvesting time until products and finding the ways to protect them from
consumption time undergo different processes and changing are the objectives for keeping the qualita-

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Original Paper Research in Agricultural Engineering, 65, 2019 (2): 33–39

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tive and quantitative characteristics. Also, discrimi- MATERIAL AND METHODS

nating the physical properties is of high importance
in designing the separating machines, elevators, In order to determine the physical properties, 100
washers and agricultural products’ processing op- potato samples of the Agria variety were randomly
erations (Peleg 1985; Sitkei 1987). Determination selected and hand-picked to undergo experiments.
of the dimension, volume and density has an impor- The samples were kept in cold storage at 4°C be-
tant role in the preservation processes, the silo and fore the test. The mass of samples was determined
bin design, and the external sorting and separating with an electronic balance with 0.01 g of sensitiv-
materials (Pitts et al. 1987; McGlone et al. 2002). ity. To determine the average size of the potatoes,
One research studied some of the physical and three linear dimensions, namely the length (L, mm),
mechanical properties of onions in Egypt. These width (W, mm), and thickness (T), were measured
properties consisted of the dimensions, geometric by using a digital calliper (DC-515; Taiwan) with an
mean diameter, arithmetic mean diameter, project accuracy of 0.01 mm. The geometric mean diameter
area, volume, mass, apparent density, static coeffi- (Dg, mm, Eq. 1) and the arithmetic mean diameter
cient of the apparent density, rolling angle, crush- (Da, mm, Eq. 2) were calculated (Mohsenin 1986):
ing force and hole test (Bahnasawy et al. 2004).
The volume and density of the agricultural products Dg  3 LWT (1)
are of great importance in different processes and
L W  T
product quality evaluations, such as fruit ripeness Da  (2)
3
(Sitkei 1987). Some mechanical properties, such
as the flesh and skin of an orange, were determined The sphericity (Ø), which is defined as the ratio of
with a compression loading and shearing test. The the surface area to the sphere, has the same volume
shear loading test was undertaken by a blade (with as that of the fruit to the surface area of the fruit,
6 mm thickness), then the force and energy values was determined by Eq. 3 (Mohsenin 1986):
were measured for shearing the orange. The results Dg
showed that by increasing the storage period, the Ø (3)
L
force and energy for shearing the orange would be
reduced (Singh, Reddy 2006). One research on the The surface area (S, mm2) of the potato was cal-
potato was performed in Iran. The physical proper- culated by Eq. 4 (Mohsenin 1986):
ties, such as the dimensions, mass, volume, density,
S  π  Dg  (4)
2

geometric mean diameter, sphericity and project

area, were determined for four varieties includ- The aspect ratio (Ra) was calculated by Eq. 5
ing Vital, Draga, Agria and Ajax (Tabatabaeefar (Omobuwajo et al. 2000):
2000). In another research, the bending and shear- W
ing properties of the sunflower’s stem was studied. Ra  (5)
L
The results showed that by increasing the moisture
content, the module of the elasticity and bending To determine the volume of each potato, a wa-
stress reduced and the shearing firmness and shear- ter container was put on the scale, then the potato
ing energy increased (Ince et al. 2005). Numerous samples were floated in the container then the mass
studies have been carried out on the physical and of the displaced water (ww, g) was determined. The
mechanical properties of different products, such as water temperature was kept constant at 25°C. The
the apricot (Hassan-Beygi et al. 2009), the straw- volume of the displaced water was equal to the po-
berry (Ozcan, Hacıseferoğulları 2007), the tato volume (V, cm3), which was calculated by Eq. 6
tomato (Taheri-Garavand et al. 2011), the ap- (Mohsenin 1986):
ple (Kheiralipour et al. 2008) and the scolymus ww
(Jahanbakhshi et al. 2016) thus far. V (6)
ρw
The objective of this research is to determine some
where: ρw – water bulk mass (g·cm–3)
of the physical and mechanical properties of a po-
tato (the Agria variety). The results can be useful for The water bulk mass at 25°C is equal to 0.9971
reducing the harvesting losses and for mechanising g·cm–3 and the true bulk mass (ρt, g·cm–3) was de-
the harvesting and post-harvesting operations. fined by Eq. 7:

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Research in Agricultural Engineering, 65, 2019 (2): 33–39 Original Paper

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m
ρt  (7)
V
where: m – potato mass (g)

Because of the importance of the apparent shape

in the separation stage of the products from the
external materials and sort them according to the
mass and product quality, the potatoes similarity
was studied with standard estimated shapes. In
this research, standard estimated shapes such as
an elliptical spheroid volume (Ve, Eq. 8), a prolate
spheroid volume (Vp, Eq. 9), an oblate spheroid vol-
ume (Vo, Eq. 10) were calculated (Mohsenin 1986;
Stroshine 2004): Fig. 1. The apparatus for measuring the projected area.
4 The potato is positioned in the centre of the horizontal
Ve  πabc (8) plate directly under the vision of the camera
3
4
Vp  πab 2 (9) (a)
3
4
Vo  πa 2b (10)
3
where: a, b, c – half of the main axes of the prolate spheroid

Each potato’s projected area was taken and re-

corded by an Area Measurement System Delta
Tenglandt apparatus (Iran) with an accuracy of
0.05 mm 2 (Fig. 1). Then, the projected areas in
three perpendicular directions were calculated
by Matlab software (Version R2012a). The criteria
projected area (CPA) was defined by Eq. 11 (Moh-
senin 1986): (b)

PA1  PA 2  PA 3
CPA  (11)
3
where: PA1, PA2, PA3 – first, second and third projected
areas (mm2), respectively

This function was estimated as Eq. 12:

Y b0  b1 x1  b2 x3  bn xn (12)

where: Y – dependent variable such as the mass; b0, b1,

b2, b3, …, bn – curve fitting parameters which are differ-
ent in each equation; x1, x2, …, xn – independent vari-
Fig. 2. The universal testing machine (MRT-5; Santum,
ables such as the dimensions
country?) (a), the prepared potato samples for measuring
One evaluation of the goodness of fit is the value the modulus of elasticity (b)
of the coefficient of determination. In general, in the
case of regression equations, the nearer R2 is to 1.00, pression test (Fig. 2a). The objective of this test is
the better the fitness curve is (Stroshine 2004). to draw the force-deformation diagram of the safe
Determination of the mechanical properties samples between two parallel plates. The loading
To determine the mechanical properties of the speed was set as 20 mm·min–1. Also, for determin-
potato samples, a universal testing set (MRT-5; ing the modulus of elasticity, cylindrical samples
Santum, Germany) was used with the uniaxial com- 14 mm in diameter and 28 mm in height were pre-

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Original Paper Research in Agricultural Engineering, 65, 2019 (2): 33–39

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pared after flattening the bottoms and tops of the ume and area of the product are applied in the mod-
samples with a thin blade, the required parameters elling matters and heat transfer during the drying or
were extracted from the mechanical properties ac- freezing processes. Knowing the information about
cording to the ASTMD 790-03 standard (Fig. 2b) geometric mean diameter and arithmetic mean
(Karaj, Müller 2010; Jahanbakhshi et al. 2016; diameter can be considered useful parameters in
Jahanbakhshi 2018). Each test was undertaken designing the sorting and packaging machines,
with four repetitions. especially for products with irregular geometric
In this research, the analysis of the measured data shapes. Part of the losses of the agriculture prod-
was performed making use of MS Excel (Version ucts are related to the incorrect packaging method
2013) and Minitab software (Version 2014). and inadequate transportation facilities. The pack-
aging should be provided with the transportation
and marketing needs in terms of mass, dimension
and shape of agriculture products, so this requires
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION knowing the physical and mechanical properties.
The information obtained in this research can be
A summary of the physical properties of the pota- used in this regard. The true density of the potato
to is shown in Table 1. According to the results, the was 1.05 g·mm–3 and this property can be used in
mean length, width and thickness, geometric mean designing the transfer, displacement and sorting
diameter and arithmetic mean diameter, spheric- systems. In a similar research, Celik et al. (2007),
ity, project area, aspect ratio, mass, volume, true Goyal et al. (2007) and Jahanbakhshi et al. (2016,
density, first project area, second project area, third 2018) have discussed and stressed upon the impor-
project area and project area mean were 91.23 mm, tance of these properties in determining the size of
63.17 mm, 52.43 mm, 66.85 mm, 68.94 mm, 74.09%, the machines, particularly that of the separation,
14,452.02 mm2, 0.70, 185.62 g, 179.11 mm3, 1.05 g transfer and sorting equipment.
per mm3, 6,276.18 mm2, 5,480.74 mm2, 4,414.85 mm2, According to the results shown in Table 2, the re-
and 5,390.59 mm2, respectively. The results showed lationship between the S level and the main dimen-
that the length is not significantly different to to the sions of the potato with the correlation coefficient
width and thickness, so it can be concluded that po- of 99% was the best regression model. Among the
tato has a high sphericity equal to 74.09. The vol- physical characteristics, the mass, the volume and

Table 1. Some physical properties of the potato (Agria variety)

Parameter Mean Maximum Minimum SD CV (%)

Length (mm) 91.23 126.51 50.47 18.16 19.90
Width (mm) 63.17 97.20 35.01 12.96 20.51
Thickness (mm) 52.43 74.93 33.02 9.68 18.46
Geometric mean diameter (mm) 66.85 88.89 38.79 11.66 17.44
Arithmetic diameter (mm) 68.94 91.67 39.50 12.03 17.44
Sphericity (%) 74.09 92.96 56.03 8.13 10.97
2
Surface area (mm ) 14,452.02 24,810.23 4,723.51 4,723.45 32.68
Aspect ratio 0.70 1.05 0.42 0.12 17.14
Mass (g) 185.62 419.19 38.68 80.60 43.42
3
Volume (mm ) 179.11 417.40 29.20 77.78 43.42
True density (g·mm–3) 1.05 1.95 0.70 0.14 13.33
First project area (mm2) 6,276.18 11,082.00 3,717.10 2,041.59 32.52
2
Second project area (mm ) 5,480.74 9,881.00 3,468.40 1,661.71 30.31
Third project area (mm2) 4,414.85 6,551.60 2,871.70 1,038.22 23.51
2
Project area mean (mm ) 5,390.59 9,171.53 3,472.23 1,550.57 28.76

SD – standard deviation, CV – coefficient of variation

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Research in Agricultural Engineering, 65, 2019 (2): 33–39 Original Paper

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Table 2. The best models and their constant values for the volume, mass and surface area based on three linear
dimensions

Constant value
Regression model R2
b0 b1 b2 b3
lnV 
b0 b1lnL  b2 lnW  b3lnT –6.12 1.24 0.25 1.17 0.91
m  b0 L  bW
1  b2T –239.74 2.52 –0.27 4.01 0.86
S  b0 L  bW
1  b2T –14,331.10 101.32 150.72 192.23 0.99

V – volume; b0, b1, b2, b3 – curve fitting parameters which are different in each equation; L – length; W – width; T – thick-
ness; m – potato mass; S – surface area

Table 3. Comparing the potato’s real volume with stand- shapes (oval, oblate spheroid and prolate spheroid)
ard geometric shapes’ volume is shown in Table 3. Oval standard shape had the
largest correlation coefficient, so the potato shape
Standard shape R2 Standard error
is similar to an oval with (R2 = 0.86). In addition,
Oval 0.86 26.68 the approximated volume with an oval against an
Prolate spheroid 0.78 32.97 oblate spheroid and a prolate spheroid showed
Oblate spheroid 0.83 33.09 the maximum correlation and minimum standard
deviation.
The results of the determination of the potato’s
the level of the image of the fruit are more impor- mechanical properties during quasi static load-
tant in the design of the equipment associated with ing are shown in Table 4. The results for the me-
the separation systems. In a similar research for chanical properties such as vertical stress, elastic-
these purposes, researchers have proposed models ity module, deformation energy, force and sample
for predicting the dimensions of different agricul- deformation were 0.34 MPa, 3.09 MPa, 892.02 J,
tural products (Lorestani, Tabatabaeefar 2006; 8.8 N, and 207.22 mm, respectively. These prop-
Shahbazi, Rahmati 2013; Taghizadeh, Jajarmi erties are considered as the basic information
2015; Ziaratban et al. 2017). needed in designing the machinery and equip-
The irregular shape of most agricultural prod- ment used during the harvesting and post-har-
ucts, such as the potato, is the reason for measur- vesting operations of a potato in order to reduce
ing its volume by the water displacement method. waste. Also, in order to minimise the mechanical
The tuber volume can be determined with similar damage and to reduce losses, the pressure forces
methods through the geometric shapes such as an caused during the transfer and packaging of the
oval, a prolate spheroid and an oblate spheroid. potato must be reduced to the minimum rate pos-
The descriptive criterion of shape and size with sible (lower than 8.8 N). The modulus of elastic-
geometric shapes was used for describing the ag- ity is one of the parameters that can be used to
riculture products. The result of the comparison measure the product’s tissue hardness. The higher
of potato’s real volume to its approximate volume the modulus of elasticity is, the harder the product
that is measured by using standard geometric tissue will be.

Table 4. The mechanical properties of the potato (Agria variety)

Parameter Average Maximum Minimum SD CV (%)

Vertical stress (MPa) 0.34 0.4 0.3 0.04 11.76
Elasticity module (MPa) 3.09 3.7 2.66 0.43 13.91
Deformation energy (J) 892.02 916.02 861.08 23.09 2.58
Force (N) 8.8 9.7 7.42 1.05 11.93
Deformation (mm) 207.22 229.8 198.9 15.07 7.27

SD – standard deviation, CV – coefficient of variation

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CONCLUSION Ince A., Uğurluay S., Güzel E., Özcan M.T. (2005): Bending
and shearing characteristics of sunflower stalk residue.
The first step in achieving qualitative standards for Biosystems Engineering, 92: 175–181.
agriculture products, such as the potato, is to know Jahanbakhshi A. (2018): Determination of some engineering
the importance of the physical and mechanical properties of snake melon (Cucumis melo var. flexuosus)
properties and their changes because of the variety fruit. Agricultural Engineering International: CIGR Jour-
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(i) The length, width, thickness, mass, volume and cal properties of carrot in order to reduce waste during
geometric mean diameter had a direct relation- harvesting and post-harvesting. Food Science & Nutrition,
ship to the potato size, while the density had an 6: 1898–1903.
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Received for publication November 24, 2017

Accepted after corrections November 16, 2018

39