Resumo:
In order to reduce the human efforts during manual harvesting and increase the operational capacity and quality, the mechanization of the harvesting operation has been significantly increasing in the last few years for coffee crops. Therefore, for the design of coffee harvesting machines, the physical and mechanical properties of coffee branches are of utmost importance for harvesting machines projects. In this way, using an experimental approach, the present paper analyzes the variability of physical and mechanical properties in the coffee branches, of the Coffea arabica L., cultivar Catuaí-Vermelho (IAC 144). The branches were collected in different positions, along the orthotropic branch: upper, middle and lower parts of the plant. The mass, volume, spe-cific mass, and modulus of elasticity of the collected specimens were determined considering their position in the plant and position along the branches. According to the position in the plant, no significant differences were found between the specific mass averages for the upper, middle, and lower parts of the plant. The research obtained an average of 1.24 GPa with a standard deviation of 0.13 GPa for the elasticity modulus. A significant increase in the elasticity modulus could be noted in the branches from the top to the bottom of the plant in the present research.
