Detection of apple firmness with a novel loudspeaker-based excitation device

Chengqiao Ding, 1. College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China, Dachen Wang, Zhe Feng, Di Cui, 2. Key Laboratory of On Site Processing Equipment for Agricultural Products, Ministry of Agriculture, Hangzhou 310058, China
2021 International Journal of Agricultural and Biological Engineering  
Firmness is one of the important indices to evaluate the internal quality of fruit. In this study, a noncontact loudspeaker-based detection system was developed to evaluate apple firmness. The structural parameters of the excitation device were modified in the single-factor experiments, and the best combination of structural parameters was that the inner diameter of the gasket was 40 mm; the distance between fruit surface and loudspeaker was 95 mm. Besides, the proper posture style was that the
more » ... apple was placed with its stem upward. After the modification of the Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV) method, the vibration response signals of 48 apples were measured to establish the firmness prediction model. The results showed that the better prediction performance of stiffness was obtained in multiple models. The Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) model had the best prediction performance by using parameters of elasticity index (EI), the peak value at the second resonance frequency f 2 (A 2 ), and peak area S, with a correlation coefficient of prediction (r p ) of 0.914; root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) of 0.491 N/mm. Therefore, the proposed detection system is feasible to nondestructively detect apple firmness, which has the potential to be applied in online detection.
doi:10.25165/j.ijabe.20221501.7028 fatcat:o3qycfkvz5g4fc3w6y7noef5ky