Exploring fruit mechanical injury mechanisms: a review of numerical simulation techniques in the whole supply chain

Mechanical injury is a key factor causing postharvest quality deterioration of fruits, significantly affecting their storage life and market competitiveness. Such injuries can occur during harvesting, packaging, processing, and transportation. A thorough understanding of the factors influencing fresh fruit damage is crucial for developing effective postharvest loss reduction strategies. Numerical simulation technologies, especially the finite element method (FEM), extended finite element method (XFEM), and discrete element method (DEM), provide powerful analytical tools for studying the response of fruits to compression, vibration, and impact under various mechanical loads and environmental conditions. Although these methods cannot directly prevent mechanical damage, they can offer scientific evidence and technical support for optimizing packaging structures, transportation methods, and harvesting mechanisms, thereby minimizing potential risks. This review systematically examines the formation mechanisms and physiological consequences of mechanical injuries in fruits, discusses the principles and latest application progress of mainstream numerical simulation methods, and focuses on key aspects of finite element analysis, such as model construction, material parameter setting, mesh generation, and boundary condition definition. It also explores the potential applications of simulation-driven design in various stages of the fruit supply chain. In the future, combining the physiological characteristics of fruits with artificial intelligence modeling may enable real-time decision-making and intelligent regulation of postharvest systems, promoting the development of fruit circulation toward high quality, low loss, and sustainability. By integrating fruit biomechanics and digital modeling, numerical simulations provide a solid theoretical foundation for minimizing fruit quality and value losses.