Design And Test Of An Air-suction Fixed Sheep Carcass Automatic Splitting Device

With the progress of social and improvement of living conditions,livestock and poultry processing industry has become one of the most fast-developing industries in recent years.Additionally,reasonable segmentation of livestock and poultry carcass can effectively increase the profit of enterprises.Nowadays,carcass segmentation has been an important part in livestock and poultry processing industry to achieve high quality and high profit.At present,sheep carcass segmentation in China,mainly relied on artificial,which had low segmentation efficiency and poor working environment.Therefore,the realization of mechanical automatic segmentation of sheep carcass could not only satisfy the urgent needs of domestic livestock and poultry carcass segmentation devices but also improve the overall strength of domestic livestock and poultry processing equipments.In view of the current situation of sheep carcass automatic segmentation machinery in China.An automatic segmentation device for split-half sheep carcass of Boer goat was designed and developed in this paper.The discrete element method was used to optimize performance parameters of the segmentation tool,and then the physical test of the whole machine was carried out to prove the rationality and effectiveness of the designed device.The main research contents were as follows :(1)The mechanical structure of the whole segmentation device was designed,including the suction fixed fixture,the mechanical arms and the end effector.The three-dimensional structure of the whole segmentation device was designed and modeled by Solidworks software,and the structure of key components of the air suction fixed fixture were checked by Hypermesh software.On this foundation,the specific size of the automatic segmentation device was determined,and the basic performance parameters of the segmentation manipulator were selected according to the actual cutting requirements of sheep carcass.Finally,the prototype of sheep carcass automatic segmentation device was developed.(2)The hardware circuit and segmentation control software of sheep carcass automatic segmentation device were designed.Firstly,the selection of controller and the connection of hardware circuit in the control system were completed,and then control programs of the automatic segmentation device was developed based on MDK-KEIL.In addition,MCU could communicate with PC through serial port.The test result showed that the manipulator could complete the startup,automatic segmentation along the dividing line and reset with high precision.(3)Based on EDEM simulation by EDEM software,the discrete element method was used to optimize the cutting tool performance parameters.The sheep bone damage force was obtained by physical test.Based on the principle of central composite design(CCD),the Hertz-Mindlin with bonding model in EDEM simulation software was used to simulate the failure test by changing the simulation parameters,and the discrete element simulation model parameters were calibrated.The accuracy of the parameters of the calibration sheep bone simulation model and the correctness of the modeling method were verified by analyzing the simulation test results and the actual failure test results.Optimize cutting tool based on simulation model.Firstly,single factor experiment was used to explore the influence of various factors on cutting torque.Then,the single-factor test results were used,and the multi-factor test was carried out combined with the Box-Behnken principle.With the average segmentation torque as the target value,the tool parameters were optimized.The performance parameters of saw blade that are most conducive to segmentation were as follows : the rake angle of saw tooth was-5°,the top angle of saw tooth was 40°,and the number of saw teeth was 80.The actual verification of the tool optimization simulation test is carried out by building the test bench.The verification test shows that the torque of the optimized tool is the smallest in the actual segmentation,which indicates that the tool optimization simulation test is reliable.(4)The performance of sheep carcass segmentation device was tested based on physical experiments.Firstly,the reliability test of suction fixture was carried out.The results showed that the suction fixture could fix sheep carcass firmly.Secondly,the physical experiment of split sheep carcass by the manipulator was carried out.The average segmentation accuracy of the manipulator was 4.27 mm,which could meets the requirements of domestic slaughtering industry.Moreover,the cutting loss rate of sheep carcass was 0.95 %,which satisfied the requirements of sheep carcass segmentation.In conclusion,the experimental results showed that the designed device could realize automatic segmentation of sheep carcass with high precision and had outstanding performance.