DESIGN OF A BEVERAGE CAN CRUSHER: A LEAN THINKING SOLUTION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY IN FOOD AND BEVERAGE INDUSTRIES

The study focused on the design of an aluminium can crusher that can be used domestically to crush empty beverage can and return them to the industry in order to encourage sustainability in the beverage manufacturing sector. Some properties of steel and aluminium which include Young's modulus, density, yield strength and poisson's ratio were used in the design calculation and simulation of the crusher. Each of the component part and the complete assembly of the machine was modelled using SolidWorks. The machine was further evaluated by testing with samples of aluminium can which showed about 60% reduction in the weight of the tested samples SimulationXpress Analysis Wizard in SolidWorks was further employed to simulate the Von Mises stress distribution and displacement on the rammer being the essential part that actually carry out the crushing.