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Stress Analysis of a Shredder Blade for Cutting Waste Plastics

Article  in  Journal of International Society for Science and Engineering · December 2019

DOI: 10.21608/jisse.2019.20292.1017

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 Journal of International Society for Science and Engineering
JISSE JISSE
Vol. 1, No. 1, 09-12 (2019)
ISSN: 2636-4425 E-ISSN:2682-3438
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Stress Analysis of a Shredder Blade for Cutting Waste Plastics

M. F. Nasr *,1 and K. A. Yehia1
*1
National Research Centre, Mechanical Engineering Department, Dokki, Giza, Egypt

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Article history: This paper presents a procedure for static stress analysis of a given shredder blade with three cutting
Received:30-11-2019 edges used for cutting Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) waste plastics. Solid Works was used for
Accepted:9-12-2019 generating the blade geometry and shape. This procedure gives detailed steps for calculating the
Online:25-12-2019 distributed applied cutting forces at the edge of the blade. The blade material is selected to be low
carbon steel with known physical and mechanical properties. Finite Element Analysis with ANSYS
Keywords: is then implemented for calculating the induced stresses and strains throughout the blade structure.
Waste Plastics The 3D modeling of the blade was imported to the ANSYS. Finite element –type “SOLID 185” was
Shredder Blades implemented for the present stress analysis. Meshing of the 3D model has been implemented with
smart mesh density (level 3) It was found from attained results that the maximum stress resulting
Material
from the applied cutting forces is well below the allowable stress of the blade material.
Stress Analysis

1. Introduction Generally, solid wastes can be classified according to their

source such as: municipal solid waste, industrial solid waste and
Plastics are one of the most essential engineering materials agricultural solid waste [3]. Plastic waste is a constituent of the
that used in various applications. They are used in the form of
solid waste set of which Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is a
sheets, bottles, packages, pipes and other purposes, such as for
common material of manufacture. PET is used to produce plastic
holding and packaging foods and drinks [1]. Used plastics
(wastes) can be converted into raw materials by utilizing an bottles and several other plastic products.
appropriate mechanical technology such as shredding, as
shown in Figure 1, or extrusion. The second step is melting and
finally converting to new products. The shredder blade plays
the major role in the plastic shredder machine. There are many
types and shapes of shredder blades [2] depicted in Figure 2.
A Shredder can have single shaft, two shafts or four shafts
according to the types of materials to be shred.

Figure 2: Types of shredder blades

A. Tegegne, et al [1] developed an electrically driven dual

shafted-multi bladed shredder machine for recycling waste
plastics. Angle and sharpness of the blades, space between the
blades etc. were considered. Tool steel ASIS L-2 was the steel
Figure 1: Plastic shredder machine type selected for blades with angle of cutting equals to 560.
R. Ekman [4] designed and manufactured a shredder machine
*
M. F. Nasr, National Research Centre, Mechanical Engineering Department,
for plastic waste material recycling.
Dokki, Giza, Egypt, +201223216615& [email protected]
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 M. F. Nasr / Journal of International Society for Science and Engineering Vol. 1, No. 1, 09-12 (2019)

He used a motor of 2.2 KW and 2820 rpm for giving the

required power to shred plastic bottles. He used a gearbox of
reduction ratio 40 to reach 70 rpm for shredding speed. M.
Sakthivel, et al [5] designed a twin shaft shredder using Pro-
Engineer software, the number of blades of the shredder was
16 on each shaft, and the output power required was 2 Hp.
Alloy steel with composition of 20MnCr5 has been used for
manufacturing the shredder blades. S. B. Pavankumar, et al [6]
designed and fabricated organic waste shredding machines,
where the cutting blades are made of high carbon steel. A
planetary gearbox with output speed 96 rpm was utilized.
2. A Procedure for Estimating the Applied Cutting Force

In this research a shredder blade with three cutting edges is

used for plastic shredding machine. The geometry and shape of
a single blade has been generated using Solid Works 16. The
blade has hexagonal hole for fixing the drive shaft. All
dimensions are illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 4: Flow chart for calculating the shredding force.

Breaking strength can be assumed as the ultimate strength

multiplied by a factor of safety 1.5

Breaking strength of PET plastic material:

3a: Isometric
 br) plastic = 1.5 * 80 = 120 MPa
The cross-sectional area of the material to be cut is

A = w*t (1)

Where: w = Width of cutting blade edge,

t = Thickness of the plastic material

The cutting force required for cutting the plastic bottles

3b: Planes Views
Figure 3: Detailed geometry of the shredder blade Fc =  br ) plastic * A (2)
(Dimensions are in mms)

The procedure for determining the distributed applied 3. A Case Study and Results
cutting (shredding) force at the edge of the blade is illustrated A case study including the determination of the force
in the flow chart given in Figure 4. required for cutting PET plastic bottles and proceeding stress
In this study the plastic material to be cut is selected to be PET analysis with ANSYS for the shredder blade is presented.
material (Polyethylene Terephthalate) with mechanical 3.1. Geometry of the blade
properties given in Table 1.
Table 1: Mechanical properties of PET material [7] The blade is assigned with (refer to Figure 3):
Coefficient of friction (µ) From 0.2 to 0.4
w = 0.01 m, Ro = 0.06 m, Rhole (hexagonal circle) = 0.01 m
Hardness (RC) From 94 to 101
Poisson's ratio (υ) From 0.37 to 0.44 The thickness of plastic bottles is assumed to be t = 5*10-4 m,
Tensile modulus (GPa) From 2 to 4 the cutting area of plastic is
Tensile strength (MPa) 80
Yield strength (MPa) 64 A = w * t = 0.01 * 5 *10 −4 = 5 *10 −6 m 2
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 M. F. Nasr / Journal of International Society for Science and Engineering Vol. 1, No. 1, 09-12 (2019)

3.2. Material and Manufacturing Method

In this paper the blades are made of low carbon steel with
ultimate tensile strength of 440 MPa, Yield strength of 370MPa,
Elastic modulus of 205 GPa, and Poisson’s ratio of 0.29. The
shredder blades can be manufactured by milling machines
using end mill and slot drill tools to produce the required
hexagonal holes, outer surfaces and cutting angles.
3.3. Cutting force

The cutting force Fc =  br ) plastic* A = 120 * 5 = 600 N

3.4. Stress Analysis of the Shredder Blade Using FEM

Figure 7: Shredder Blade Deformed Shape
FEM was applied for stress analysis of the shredder blade
using ANSYS 19.2 software. 3D modeling of the blade was
imported to the ANSYS. The analysis considered only static
stresses and strains; no vibration or dynamic analysis was
considered. The element type is SOLID 185
Meshing of the 3D model has been implemented with smart
mesh density (level 3). Figure 5 illustrates the model after
refine meshing.

Figure 8: Von Misses Stress

Figure 5: Shredder Blade Meshing

The boundary conditions were determined in the model; the
hexagonal hole in blade center has been fixed in all coordinate
directions. The calculated cutting force (600 N) was applied on
the blade top edge and distributed along the nodes on this line as
shown in Figure 6 below.
Figure 9: Total Mechanical Strain
The results obtained from the ANSYS (as illustrated in
Figures 7, 8 and 9) indicates that the maximum Von Misses
stress is 201 MPa, which is safe in values compared to the
yield stress of the blade material.
The maximum total mechanical strain is 1.4*10-3, and the
maximum deformation is 0.97*10-5 m.
For other researches that analyzed the shredder blades with
ANSYS, Sekar Ravi [8] analyzed the plastic shredder blade
with two cutting edges by ANSYS using heat treated mild steel,
and outer diameter of 100 mm and thickness of 5 mm. He
Figure 6: Shredder Blade with applied loads and found that the maximum stress is 2.5 MPa, the maximum strain
boundary conditions is 1.2*10-5, and maximum deformation 4*10-6 mm.

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 M. F. Nasr / Journal of International Society for Science and Engineering Vol. 1, No. 1, 09-12 (2019)

Cristian Pedraza et al. [9] used AISI 1045 with elastic limit
of 530 MPa and D6AC with elastic limit of 1310 MPa as
materials for designing and analysis the shredder blades with
ANSYS. The affecting shredding forces was 8825 N. It was
found that the maximum stress for AISI 1045 was 374 MPa
and minimum stress of 65 N/m2. For D6AC, the maximum
stress is 374 MPa and minimum stress is 772 N/m 2.
4. Conclusions

The shredding machine for cutting waste plastics is widely

used in industries for the plastic waste management. In this
research paper a shredder blade is developed using Solid
Works, and the stress analysis has been performed using
ANSYS. The material of the blades and method of
manufacturing were being demonstrated.
The results obtained by the Finite Element Analysis
illustrated that the stresses to which they will be subjected in
the process of shredding PET plastic material are well below
the yield stress of blade material. Vibration and dynamic stress
analysis of shredder blades are under investigation for a future
study.
Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

References
[1] A.Tegegne, A. Tsegaye, E. Ambaye, R. Mebrhatu "Development of Dual
Shaft Multi Blade Waste Plastic Shredder for Recycling Purpose",
International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI) | Volume
VI, Issue I, 2019
[2] S. VijayAnanth, T.N. Sureshkumar, C. Dhanasekaran , A. Aravinth KumarA,
" Design and Fabrication of Plastic Shredder Machine for Clean
Environment ", International Journal of Management, Technology And
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[3] D. Atadious, and O. Joel, " Design and Construction of a Plastic Shredder
Machine for Recycling and Management of Plastic Wastes ", International
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[4] R. Ekman, "Development of a Plastic Shredder ", master thesis, Sweden,
Lund University, 2018
[5] M. Sakthivel, G. Rajeshkannan, M. Naveenkumar, M. Muralimanokar, "
Design And Analysis of Twin Shaft Shredder Using Pro-E And Hyperworks
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Madhusudhan, " Design and Fabrication of Organic Waste Shredding
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ISSN (Online): 2319 – 6734, |Volume 7 Issue 6 Ver III, 2018
[7] F. J. Shackelford and W. Alexander, " Materials Science And Engineering
Handbook," CRC Press LLC, 2001
[8] S. Ravi, “ Utilization of Upgraded Shredder Blade and Recycling the Waste
Plastic and Rubber Tyre”, in 2018 Proceedings of the International
Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management Paris,
France
[9] C.P, Yepes, P.R. Miguel Angel and P.M. José, “Analysis by Means of the
Finite Element Method of the Blades of a PET Shredder Machine with
Variation of Material and Geometry”, Contemporary Engineering Sciences,
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