Investigations on the evaluation of rheological properties of cereal based viscoelastic fluids using ultrasound

The ultrasonic approach provides a non-destructive, rapid and low cost technique for the measurement of physical characteristics of dough. The traditional approaches for dough testing are slow and off line and do not provide fundamental rheological information in the production line nor while processing. The baking industry is in need for such a tool to achieve final product quality and consistency.In this work investigations are performed on the evaluation of the physical properties of wheat flour water system using acoustic parameters such as the speed of sound, attenuation and acoustic impedance for three different types of flour: 405, 550 and 1050 at different weight based water contents varying from 48% to 60%. An investigation was held to correlate between the mentioned acoustic parameters and the Hookean material constants (Shear, Young, Bulk modulus and Poisson’s ratio) at certain pressure. The results in this work report an average max deviation of 0.08% in the estimation of the elastic modules for the three wheat flour types used.

► In this work evaluating the physical properties of wheat flour water system using a low frequency ultrasound is presented.
► The traditional approaches for dough testing are slow and off line and do not provide fundamental rheological information.
► The results were correlated proving the success of this approach as a rapid accurate assessment tool for dough production.