*Article* **Numerical Simulation of the Picking Process of Supernormal Jujube Branches**

**Ren Zhang 1, Guofeng Wang 1,2, Wei Wang 1,\*, Dezhi Ren 1, Yuanjuan Gong 1, Xiang Yue 1, Junming Hou <sup>1</sup> and Mengmeng Yang <sup>1</sup>**


**Abstract:** This paper elaborates on a digital simulation study on supernormal particle flow used to investigate and analyze the process of picking up jujube branches, which was a meaningful attempt to search for accurate and effective advanced numerical analogy methods in the agricultural field. In this paper, the meshless technology based on the element-free Galerkin method was used for the first time to present the effects of particle size, particle number and particle acting force on the movement of irregular particles, and the influence of the gear rotation speed, the feeding amount, and the jujube branch size on the movement behavior as well as the picking rate. It can describe not only the particles' dynamic movement in the process of picking up jujube twigs, such as feeding, collision, throwing and rolling, but also the effect of the quality and shape caused by the particle size, which in turn affects the surface force of particles and interparticle acting force, thereby affecting the weight function in the analytical solution, the total feeding amount and the effect of the acting force resulting from the particles' contact, roll and collision caused by gear rotation. The findings reveal that the digital simulation, based on the meshless Galerkin technology and Rocky software, is effective in dealing with issues related to supernormal particle flow. By eliminating the influence of geometric shapes on calculations, the method boasts an effective solution to the movement problems of irregularly shaped particles, which would be further applied in the agriculture field.

**Keywords:** meshless Galerkin method; supernormal particles; jujube branches; picking mechanism; numerical model
