Physical characterization and mass modeling of dried Terminalia chebula fruit

摘要

The research was inducted to investigate the physical properties and to determine the mass model for Terminalia chebula fruits depending on its dimensional attributes. The investigation revealed that principle dimensions of the whole fruit T. chebula viz. average longitudinal axis (length), intermediate axis (width), and transverse axis (thickness) were 31.076mm, 17.404mm, and 16.073mm, respectively. The thousand fruit mass was found to be 3.890kg while the fruit has a mass distribution over the range of 1.730-9.794g. The dimensional properties such as arithmetic mean diameter, equivalent mean diameter, and geometric mean diameter were 21.518mm, 20.553mm, and 20.538mm, respectively. The aspect ratio, sphericity, eccentricity, and fruit part fraction were calculated. The surface area and volume were noted to be 1,302.351mm(2) and 10,054.28mm(3), respectively. The frictional properties such as coefficient of friction and angle of friction were measured. Mass modeling was done by using four different models viz. linear, power, quadratic, and s-curve relating to the mass and dimensional property of the fruit which will be applicable in machine vision for grading systems. The quadratic and linear models showed the best relations between the mass and dimensional parameters of the fruit.Practical applicationsThe fruit of Terminalia chebula is a minor forest produce but has a wide application in the traditional medicines and food industries. The determination of the physiological properties such as dimensional, gravimetric, and frictional properties will help researchers, industrial process designers to design the process handling equipment, postharvest machinery, storage structures, grading, sorting equipment, etc., in the processing and manufacturing industries. The fruits can be separated on the basis of mass rather than its shape and size. The mass modeling of the fruit will be beneficial to segregate the fruits on industrial scale with minimal labor and more accuracy by using the relationship for mass of fruit with its physical properties.