No abstract

Butter and milkfat are examples of plastic materials for which texture is a critical factor in determining functionality and consumer acceptance. The methods by which butter rheology is characterized are discussed, including large deformation techniques such as cone penetrometry, compression, sectility and extrusion, and methods which involve testing at low levels of strain. Correlations between instrumental tests and sensory-evaluated properties of the fats are explored. Rheological properties, including hardness, spreadability, setting, work softening, and thixotropy are described, and the models which have been proposed to characterize these behaviors are reviewed. Techniques which have been devised recently to quantitatively relate structural measurements to rheology are also examined. Modification of butter's rheological properties can be accomplished through alterations in composition or in the manufacturing process. These approaches are discussed and evaluated.

We investigate, both experimentally and theoretically, the effect of coupling between resonant scatterers on the transmission coefficient of a model system of isotropic scatterers. The model system consists of a monodisperse layer of bubbles, which exhibit a strong monopole scattering resonance at low ultrasonic frequencies. The layer was a true 2D structure obtained by injecting very monodisperse bubbles (with radius a approximately 100 microm) into a yield-stress polymer gel. Even for a layer with a low concentration of bubbles (areal fraction, n pi a(2), of 10-20%, where n is the number of bubbles per unit area), the ultrasonic transmission was found to be significantly reduced by the presence of bubbles (-20 to -50 dB) and showed a sharp minimum at a particular frequency. Interestingly, this frequency did not correspond to the resonance frequency of the individual, isolated bubbles, but depended markedly on the concentration. This frequency shift is an indication of strong coupling between the bubbles. We propose a simple model, based on a self-consistent relation, which takes into account the coupling between the bubbles and gives good agreement with the measured transmission coefficient.

Measurements of the phase velocity and attenuation of sound in concentrated samples of bubbly gels are presented. Hair gel was used as a matrix material to obtain well characterized distributions of bubbles. Ultrasonic measurements were conducted over a large range of frequencies, including the resonance frequencies of the bubbles. Surprisingly good agreement with Foldy's prediction was found, even for monodisperse samples at resonance frequencies, up to volume fraction of 1%. Beyond this concentration, the effects of high-order multiple scattering were observed. These results support the feasability of ultrasonic techniques to investigate the size distribution of bubbles in a weak gel or liquid.

Mixing is critical to attainment of a desirable gas cell distribution in dough. By varying mixer headspace pressure, changes in the mechanical properties of dough were investigated as a function of the dough's void concentration using low frequency (50 kHz) ultrasonic techniques. For the mixer used, this allowed the volume fraction of voids (Φ) to be varied from ≈0.01 to 0.08. The ultrasonic attenuation of longitudinal waves increased linearly with increases in Φ. If, as reported, pressure reductions during mixing decrease the number density of the voids but do not affect void size, the change in attenuation is proportional to the number of voids. By contrast, the velocity of longitudinal ultrasonic waves decreased dramatically with increasing Φ in the range 0.012 < Φ < 0.03, dropping from a value near that of water to values well below the velocity of sound in air. At higher Φ, the velocity decrease was less rapid. The longitudinal elastic modulus determined from these ultrasonic results shows that the mechanical properties of the dough are sensitive to the presence of gas bubbles. At low void fractions, the elastic behavior of dough is also influenced by changes in dough matrix properties.