Short Title: Int. J. Mech. Eng. Robot. Res.
Frequency: Bimonthly
Professor of School of Engineering, Design and Built Environment, Western Sydney University, Australia. His research interests cover Industry 4.0, Additive Manufacturing, Advanced Engineering Materials and Structures (Metals and Composites), Multi-scale Modelling of Materials and Structures, Metal Forming and Metal Surface Treatment.
2025-01-20
2025-01-09
2024-12-18
Manuscript received September 9, 2022; revised November 14, 2022; accepted January 4, 2023.
Abstract—The majority of lawn mowers available in the market are either fuel or electrically operated. Both sources of energy demand high operational and maintenance costs, and they are not environmentally friendly. This paper proposes the design and fabrication of a simple solar operated lawn mower. Its blade cutting operation is based on the scotch yoke mechanism. All other components are also presented. In addition, the necessary calculations of converting solar energy into electrical energy are done, as well as the calculations on the battery capacity and time needed to charge. The 3D CAD prototype is created, and the structural analysis to check stresses and deflections at critical locations on frame and blades of the lawn mower is performed by using SolidWorks© software. Structural analysis results show that the maximum stress on the frame is 0.34 MPa, and on the blades it is 0.82 MPa, both which are less than the yielding stress. Furthermore, the deflection at critical location on frame is 0.108mm and on blades it is 1.33 mm respectively. Those results have been compared to analytical calculations and good agreement was found. As a conclusion, this design demonstrates that a simple, efficient and sustainable solar operated lawn mower can be produced at minor costs. Keywords—lawn mower, scotch yoke mechanism, structural analysis, battery charging and working time, solar power, deflection, Von Mises stress Cite: Nader Ghareeb, "Design and Analysis of a Solar Operated Lawn Mower," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 169-174, May 2023. Copyright © 2023 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the article is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.