Numerical Studies of Transport Properties in Heterogeneous Food Systems

• Main Authors: Courtois Peggy, Ettelaie Rammile, Chen Jianshe
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: De Gruyter 2006-10-01
• Series: Applied Rheology
• Subjects: transport properties; brownian motion; heterogeneous system; aggregation
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/arh-2006-0020

The current computer simulation based study aims to elucidate the complex role that the state of aggregation and morphology of the food materials plays in determining their transport behaviour. Using Brownian dynamic simulations, applied to colloidal systems, we simulate the compression of two different dense layers of nanoparticles (with reversible and irreversible bonds), at interface, at three different compression rates. We determine the desired transport coefficient for these structures using a novel technique, originally proposed by Torquato and Kim (1990). This method allows us to consider complex structures in our study, for which calculations of effective transport coefficients using conventional methods, like finite elements and finite difference, would be relatively difficult. We first validate our algorithm by comparing its results with those of exact calculations, for different regular lattices. Our results are in excellent agreement with the theory. The variation in the transport coefficient of nano-particle monolayers during the compression, are also correlated with the build up of stress and changes in the structure of the films.