Abstract One of the major obstacles to the modelling and optimisation of horticultural cooling processes is the construction of an accurate 3D bulk fruit geometry. When a collection of horticultural products is packed into a box, the shape of the individual fruits or vegetables combine to form a stack with a complex and convoluted shape. The precise shape of the stack may have a significant impact on the airflow pathway and hence the rate of transfer processes in the system, such as cooling. Thus it is important for a realistic model for cooling of stacked, packaged fruit to have the capability to explore sensitivity to the randomness of possible stacking outcomes. Numerous realistic stacks of fruit may need to be generated to enable subsequent simulation to quantify effect in outcome. In this paper a new tool is developed that is capable of rapidly generating the geometry of a fruit stack. The tool (implemented in Blender) takes a size and weight distribution of fruit (in this case Hayward kiwifruit) and simulates the effect of gravity and friction forces to form a realistic stack. The tool-generated stacks were validated against CT scans of real fruit stacks and found to be similar, except that in the CT scans the presence of an internal polyliner appeared to hinder the occurrence of fruit in the bottom corners of the stack, which was not simulated in the stacking tool. Generating a stack required only 150 s on a desktop PC, which makes the tool viable for integration with other simulation systems to optimise packaging design. Automated methods to generate a realistic polyliner shape were also developed, and the tool was used to predict box volumetric efficiency to within 2%.

中文翻译：

---

包装园艺产品的自动随机堆垛工具

摘要 园艺冷却过程建模和优化的主要障碍之一是构建准确的 3D 散装水果几何形状。当一系列园艺产品被装入一个盒子时，单个水果或蔬菜的形状组合在一起，形成一个形状复杂、错综复杂的堆叠。烟囱的精确形状可能会对气流路径产生重大影响，从而对系统中的传输过程（例如冷却）产生重大影响。因此，对于用于冷却堆叠包装水果的现实模型而言，重要的是能够探索对可能堆叠结果的随机性的敏感性。可能需要生成大量逼真的水果堆，以便随后的模拟能够量化结果的影响。在本文中，开发了一种新工具，能够快速生成水果堆的几何形状。该工具（在 Blender 中实现）采用水果（在本例中为海沃德奇异果）的大小和重量分布，并模拟重力和摩擦力的影响以形成逼真的堆叠。工具生成的堆栈针对真实水果堆栈的 CT 扫描进行了验证，并发现它们是相似的，除了在 CT 扫描中，内部多线的存在似乎阻碍了堆栈底部角落中水果的出现，这不是在堆叠工具中模拟。在台式 PC 上生成堆栈仅需 150 秒，这使得该工具可与其他仿真系统集成以优化包装设计。还开发了生成逼真折线形状的自动化方法，