PTRCALS101 - Food Physics and Modeling

Course Description

Mechanistic, model-based understanding and digital tools critically innovate in the design cycle for products and processes, food manufacturing is no exception. The course will introduce tools such as computational modeling, digital twins, and predictive knowledge bases, exploring deeper into the underlying universal physics-based frameworks describing transformations in food during processing. We will develop the framework that treats food as porous media with multiphase/multicomponent transport due to diffusion, capillary pressure, swelling pressure, and gas pressure, with shrinkage/expansion driven by moisture change and internal pressure. Mechanistic frameworks for food quality and food safety will complement the porous media approach. Case studies will include complex multiphysics applications such as meat cooking with shrinkage, case hardening during drying, puffing with a massive expansion, and microwave drying with shrinkage. Learning outcomes will include building the frameworks, understanding food processes using the frameworks and creating a computational model through a learner-selected project.

Faculty Author

Ashim Datta

Benefits to the Learner

• Explain a food physics framework in terms of its basic building blocks that can describe many food processes
• Compare and contrast between simpler and more comprehensive physics frameworks for understanding food processes
• Apply a food physics framework to complex food processes for their understanding and optimization
• Implement the framework-based computational model in software and perform simulations
• Create a computational model to speed up the design cycle of food products and processes