Supervisors: Dr. S. Bakalis, Prof. I.T. Norton
A range of food related diseases require production of ‘healthy' food products that are of reduced fat and caloric content but retain their high quality characteristics.
Despite advances in the area of physical sciences in creating microstructures with advanced property functions there is still a need to understand the performance of such products during oral processing. An engineering understanding of the phenomena occurring during eating will result in a new approach of Food Product Design and the possibility to engineer healthy products of enhanced sensory characteristics.
The objective of this study will be to obtain an engineering understanding of phenomena occurring during eating of liquid multiphase products. Phenomena such as flow patterns, micro-mixing and microstructure behaviour during mastication will be examined. This will be followed by relating in-vivo microstructure behaviour to in-vitro measurements obtained using a range of experimental tools such as rheology and soft tribology.
Indicative objectives:
1) Develop and implement techniques that would allow quantification of flow and micro-mixing phenomena occurring in the mouth using a compilation of optical techniques, tracers, pressure probes and tomographic techniques.
2) Understand the effect of formulation during in-mouth behaviour
3) Extend and validate existing in-vitro mouth models to study microstructure parameters
4) Understand the relative importance of physical parameters that determine microstructure behaviour in mouth.
For further information contact Dr S Bakalis on s.bakalis@bham.ac.uk
