ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the state of the art in crop modeling with a focus on fibrous biological materials and presents some perspectives for the future. It discusses some basic properties of the compression of fibrous biological material. The chapter also discusses two different approaches for modeling this behavior at the bulk level and the particle level. It illustrates each approach with an application in agricultural machinery design. The force required to compress fibrous biological material depends on the rate at which the material is compressed. As the compression behavior of biological materials is influenced by their moisture content and temperature, several researchers have investigated the possibility to improve the compression behavior of biological materials by preconditioning. Prony series in combination with Finite Element Method (FEM) have been successfully used to describe the compression behavior of biological and non-biological materials. Using the traditional or the databased contact models (LUTs), virtual stems were created that experience and exert forces when compressed.
