Rheometer for characterizing the mechanical properties of food materials

为了提高新型和现有食品的质量，需要在加工和储存的不同阶段对其物理特性进行量化表征和更好地了解。本申请要求购买HR-2 Discovery混合流变仪，用于表征食品材料在制造过程中暴露在各种温度和压力条件下以及各种变形应力率下的机械性能变化。购买这种流变仪后，Koksel博士、Scanlon博士、Aluko博士和Erkinbaev博士将可以使用工具来研究从膨化零食、素食/素食汉堡肉饼和面团到食品悬浮液、蛋白质凝胶和富含蛋白质的泡沫等各种食品的机械特性。Koksel研究的一个主要部分涉及阐明富含蛋白质的充气食品是如何形成新的结构的，这些食品是脆的和脆的，以及能够模仿动物肌肉肉的多汁和纤维性质的质构植物性肉类。这两种结构形成途径的测量都需要压力和温度控制的流变仪。另一个研究方向(Scanlon)是确定控制面团粘弹性行为的组成和结构基础，并建立其组成特性的简单可靠的模型。由于面团处理困难和配方变化引起的产品质量问题，这项研究具有科学意义，也与烘焙行业相关。Scanlon的研究项目涉及对食品悬浮液在加工过程中的复杂流动特性的研究，为此，高灵敏度的流变仪是必不可少的，以便测量作为这些颗粒状食品浆体中固体含量的函数的弹性发展。对于Aluko来说，对食品蛋白质凝胶中结构-功能关系的基础流变学研究将导致发现新的蛋白质凝胶。埃尔金巴耶夫对植物蛋白表面活性剂在泡沫机械性能中的作用的研究将补充他实验室的光学测量，揭示传统和新型食品中泡沫质地和口感是如何受到影响的。所有上述项目都需要非常灵敏的温度控制和低合规性的流变仪，以便能够对模型和复杂食品系统的机械性能进行高精度测量。如果没有新的流变仪，我们的出版物在科学界的影响就不会那么大，因为使用我们目前的流变仪产生的数据范围有限，具有限制性。如果我们目前已有19年历史的流变仪(或其任何部件)出现故障，该流变仪已大量使用，不再支持服务，申请人的研究计划和他们的HQP培训将严重中断。

To improve the quality of novel and existing foods, their physical properties need to be quantitatively characterized and better understood at various stages of processing and during storage. This application requests the purchase of a HR-2 Discovery Hybrid Rheometer to be used in characterizing the changes in mechanical properties of food materials as they are exposed to a wide range of temperature and pressure conditions and at various deforming stress rates that foods go through during manufacturing. With the purchase of this rheometer, Drs. Koksel, Scanlon, Aluko and Erkinbaev will have access to tools to investigate the mechanical properties of foods ranging from expanded snacks, vegetarian/vegan burger patties and bread doughs to food suspensions, protein gels and protein-rich foams. A major part of Koksel's research involves elucidating how novel structures are formed in protein enriched aerated foods that are crispy and crunchy, and texturized plant-based meats' that are able to mimic the juicy and fibrous nature of animal muscle meat. Measurement of both these structure formation pathways requires a pressure- and temperature-controlled rheometer. Another research direction (Scanlon) is to identify the compositional and structural bases that govern the viscoelastic behaviour of wheat flour doughs and to establish simple reliable models of their constitutive properties. This line of research is scientifically interesting and also practically relevant to the bakery industry due to dough handling difficulties and product quality issues induced by changes in formula. Scanlon's research program involves studies of the complex flow properties of food suspensions during processing, for which a high sensitivity rheometer is essential so as to measure elasticity development as a function of solid content in these particulate food slurries. For Aluko, fundamental rheological investigations of structure-function relationships in food protein gels as affected by processing parameters and intrinsic protein structures will lead to the discovery of novel protein gels. Erkinbaev's research on the role of plant protein surfactants in foam mechanical properties will complement the optical measurements from his lab, unraveling how foam texture and mouth feel are affected in conventional and novel foods. All of the above projects require very sensitive temperature control and a rheometer with a low compliance to enable high precision measurements of the mechanical properties of model and complex food systems. Without a new rheometer, our publications do not have as high an impact in the scientific community, due to the limited scope and restrictive nature of the data produced using our current rheometer. Should our current 19-years-old rheometer (or any of its parts), that is heavily used and no longer supported for service, fail, the research programs of the applicants and training of their HQP will be severely interrupted.