Influência do formato e velocidade da lâmina nas forças de corte para cana-de-açúcar

Abstract

Mechanical cane harvesters cut the cane at its base by the impact of multiple blades mounted on a rotating disk. In the impact cut, the essential force is normal to the blade edge and it causes large damage to the stool and cane. If the blade has an oblique angle relative to the direction of motion, a slicing cut occurs, where, besides the normal force there is a component of tangential force. In this work, the cutting forces for standard, angled and serrated blades with two different cutting speeds that correspond to a disk rotation of 450 and 600 rpm were compared. The standard blade (impact cut) did not show significant difference with the cutting speed but for angled blades (slicing cut) there was reduction of force when the speed increases. Serrated blade with pitch of 3 mm shows the smaller cutting force.