Abstract
The freight vehicle is mostly used to transport the fruit. Shock and impact generated by the freight vehicle may give serious damage to fruits hence to reduce the fruits damage, the optimum packaging design during transportation by vehicle is required. In order to design the packaging system for fruit transportation optimally, the comprehension of characteristic for vibration and shock acting on vehicles under various road conditions and loading methods is required. This research was performed to analyze the shock characteristics, acceleration level and power spectral density (PSD) of the fruit transportation vehicles under several travel roads and positions. The vibration signal was measured and analyzed at the transportation vehicle operating on the road of three different surface conditions. The maximum acceleration was measured at the rear-end of the vehicle, and the acceleration in the direction of up-and-down (z-axis) was much greater than those in the directions of back-and-forth (x-axis) or right-and-left (y-axis). The peak acceleration in the direction of up-and-down (z-axis) at the vehicle driving on the expressway, the local road paved with concrete, and unpaved local road were 5.3621 G, 8.232 G, and 14.162 G respectively. PSD at 2.44 Hz showed maximum value at all road conditions. The maximum values of PSD on the expressway, a local road paved with concrete, and unpaved local road were 0.0075222 $G^2/Hz$, 0.058655 $G^2/Hz$, and 0.24598 $G^2/Hz$ respectively. The value of PSD decreased with an increase of the vibration frequency of the transportation vehicle. In most cases, the vibration frequency was below 20 Hz during transportation.
