The specific splitting energy of sugarcane

During mechanical billet harvesting, cane stalks are typically cut by a number of blade impacts to complete the cut. With current harvester designs, the cane stalks are also bent forward by the knockdown and finned feed rollers prior to this cutting. Previous research, using a single-cut device, showed that an initial partial cut which enters the middle third of a cane stalk, results in a large split to the cane stalk. A splitting model is developed by equating the energy required to create a split to the strain energy of the bent stalk released as a result of the split. The model shows that for a given specific splitting energy, the length of splits in stalks during harvesting will increase with increases in knockdown angle and reductions in the knockdown height. Split lengths will also increase with cane stiffness. The model is used to determine the nominal specific splitting energy for sugarcane. The specific splitting energy was determined to range between 2.1 and 3.1 kJ/m2 for low and high fibre canes respectively.