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Conceptual Design of an Instant Plantain Dough Meal Machine

Plantain (Musa Paradisiaca) is one of the major staples widely cultivated in the tropics and subtropics, with Nigeria being a significant producer worldwide. Plantain dough is a meal common in the southern part of Nigeria, known for its pharmacological benefits, which include serving as an antihypertensive, hypoglycemic, anti-cholesterol, antioxidant, and anti-allergic agent. The annual plantain production suffers a significant loss of over 50% due to post-harvest issues, resulting from inadequate facilities and food processing machines. This thesis addresses one of the major challenges of the plantain (food) industry. A conceptual design of a plantain processing machine was created using a stainless-steel grade of austenitic 304, and SolidWorks CAD was utilized to analyze the behavior and performance of the conceptual design. Employing a solid curvature-based mesh of high-quality settings with 195,699 nodes and 102,854 elements. The combined effects of applied torque, normal forces, gravity, and thermal loading do not compromise the structural integrity of the assembly. Stress, strain, and displacement values remain well below critical thresholds, demonstrating that the current design is mechanically sound and suitable for the intended operating design conditions.