Mechanical damage is a phenomenon that always occurred in the postharvest process. Due to the inappropriate harvest and postharvest process of Olive that lead to the bruise phenomenon, the quality of the extracted olive oil reduces. In this study, the effect of olive damage on bruising volume and quality characteristics was investigated. Three different varieties of Yellow, Oily, and Fishemi in three stages of unripe, semiripe, and ripped were used. Also, three kinds of the surface of rubber, nylon, and foam for the drop test were considered. The tests were performed in laboratory mode and simulated. For all tests, with increasing maturity, the amount of stress and internal energy were decreased and the bruise volume was increased. The amount of bruise volume and bruise susceptibility were obtained, and the experimental and simulated conditions were compared. On the other hand, the quality characteristics of olive oil including free fatty acid (FFA), peroxide value (PV), k232 and K270 coefficients, total chlorophyll, total carotenoid, total phenol, and total flavonoid were measured. The results showed that the finite element and chemometric methods are acceptable methods for predicting the generated energy of the fruit during impact, the amount of bruising volume, as well as evaluating the quality of the extracted oil.
Keywords: bruise; finite element method; olive oil; quality; stress.
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