Physico-Mechanical Properties of Sugarcane Stalks

Abstract Manual harvesting of sugarcane requires skilled labourers, as improper harvesting leads to a significant loss of yield. Therefore, it is necessary to move towards designing a system capable of harvesting sugarcane on smallholdings, with high harvesting efficiency. This study aims to determine some physico-mechanical properties of sugarcane stalks related to harvester by making a comprehensive analysis of the compressing, bending, and shearing properties of sugarcane stalks. These properties were measured at three moisture content levels at three positions (base, middle, and top) of the stalk with three sugarcane varieties (G.T.54-9, IK 76-66, and HAO3-55-24). The different moisture contents were fresh stalk, after 7 days, and after 15 days. The values of different content with different varieties were (70.3, 42.1, and 23.2%), (68.7, 61.3, and 42.7%) and (66.4, 48.6, and 30.5%), respectively. The physico-mechanical properties of stalks were measured in terms of diameter, length, fresh mass, moisture content, sugarcane stalk bulk density, compression stress, shear stress and bending stress at three different positions (top, middle, and base).The most important results showed that the decreasing stalk moisture content of three sugarcane varieties led to an increase in compression, shear, and bending stresses.