Design of Hopper Position for Development of Automatic Mackerel Grader

Abstract

In this study, the position of the hopper in an automatic mackerel grader is determined. The mackerel grader is used for the purpose of sorting the mackerels according to the mackerel size. Hoppers classify mackerels with 4 categories such as very small mackerel, small mackerel, middle mackerel and large mackerel. The multi-body dynamics techniques are employed to carry out the sorting simulation and RecurDyn program is used for the simulation. Solid-Solid contact is defined between the mackerel and grader. From the simulation results, it is noted that the position of the 2^nd hopper, the 3^rd hopper and the 4^th hopper is 1,584 mm, 2,586 mm and 3,581 mm, and sorting error rate of very small, small, middle and large mackerels 0%, 8.33%, 5.88% and 6.67%, respectively when rollers are rotated with 150 rpm.