Mechanical modelling of cereal solid foods

Processed cereal solid foods can often be considered as solid foams, i.e. cellular solids, and their constitutive walls, mostly a blend of starch and proteins, may be envisioned like a composite material. The change between cellular intermediate scale and composite micro-scale may be achieved by mechanical modelling using numerical methods. For both scales, imaging methods (microscopy and tomography) provide relevant description of product structure, which can be meshed and used in computer software for mechanical simulation. This paper reviews the latest applications of mechanical modelling by finite element method to the field of cereal foods, outlines their actual limits and prospects for texture prediction.