Determination of Physical Properties and Mechanical Behavior of Sunflower seeds

ABSTRACT: Knowing physical and mechanical properties of Nuts Sunflower could be useful in the design of equipment for harvesting and processing and necessary for equipment used in activities such as transportation, storage and in food production processes like drying, syrup production to establish an information database of this fruit, too. In this research the physical and mechanical properties of Nuts Sunflower were investigated. The physical properties that measured including mass, dimensions, aspect ratio, geometric mean diameter, arithmetic means diameter, projected area (big, medium and small area), criteria areas, surface area, sphericity and moisture, their averages were found to be 0.19 gr,23.97 mm, 7.66 mm, 4.13 mm, 32.10%, 9.09 mm, 11.92 mm, 210.01 mm2, 123.94 mm2, 43.43 mm2, 125.80 mm2, 261.23 mm2, 50 %and 7.86 % respectively. Mechanical properties such as elasticity modulus, maximum force which fruit can support, work which performed to this force under vertical and horizontal compression loading and hardness investigated that their averages were found 0.4 GPa, 39.84 N, 36.62 N.mm, 30.63 N/mm and 0.20 GPa, 193.89 N, 124.19N.mm, 127.94 N/mm respectively. At last, Coefficient of static friction of samples measured on three surfaces (Glass, Galvanize and Wood), that their averages were found 0.35, 0.40, 0.47 respectively.