Mechanical Damage to Corn Seeds

The objective of this research was to evaluate and model the mechanical damage to corn seeds under impact loading. The experiments were conducted at moisture contents of 7.60 to 25% (wet basis) and at the impact energies of 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 J, using an impact damage assessment device. The results showed that impact energy, moisture content, and the interaction effects of these two variables significantly influenced the percentage of physical damage in corn seeds (p<0.01). Increasing the impact of the energy from 0.1 to 0.3 J caused a significant increase in the mean values of damage from 23.73 to 83.49%. The mean values of physical damage decreased significantly by a factor of 1.92 (from 83.75 to 43.56%), with an increase in the moisture content from 7.6 to 20%. However, by a higher increase in the moisture from 20 to 25%, the mean value of damage showed a non-significant increasing trend. There was an optimum moisture level of about 17 to 20%, at which seed damage was minimized. An empirical model composed of seed moisture content and energy impact was developed for accurately describing the percentage of physical damage to corn seeds. It was found that the model has provided satisfactory results over the whole set of values for the dependent variable.