88C-25 |
Noncontact ultrasound for rapid measurement of physical property of cheddar cheese |
B. K. CHO1, J. M. K. Irudayaraj1, and M. C. Bhardwaj2. (1) Agricultural and Biological Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, 239 Agricultural Engineering BLDG, University Park, PA 16802, (2) SecondWave System Inc., 1020 E. Boal Avenue, Boalsburg, PA 16827 Ultrasound technology has been applied to characterize and study a range of food materials increasingly due to its nondestructive, rapid, and automated potential for food quality measurement. However, conventional ultrasound measurement has a significant limitation in that, it uses a coupling medium such as oil, gels, or immersion method between the transducer and test specimen owing to extremely high attenuation of ultrasound by air. The use of coupling liquid and water immersion method are undesirable for food quality measurement since it might change or destroy the liquid-sensitive, porous, and continuously formed food materials. Consequently, non-contact ultrasound technique that could overcome the large acoustic impedance mismatch between air and material would be advantageous if the appropriate technology becomes available. The objectives of this study are (1) to investigate sampling procedures using the non-contact ultrasound transducer for measurement of the physical property of cheese and (2) to demonstrate a non-contact ultrasound technique using artificial neural network for rapid, on-line, and automatic measurement of the physical properties of cheese. A new non-contact ultrasound parameter, called the ultrasound transmissivity as well as the ultrasound velocity was measured and correlated with the physical properties of Cheddar cheese, such as failure strain, failure stress, Young’s modulus, and toughness using a multi-linear neural network analysis. When the velocity, the transmissivity, and cheese types were used as inputs to the neural network, the squared correlation (R2) values for the prediction of failure strain, failure stress, Young’s modulus and toughness of Cheddar cheese were 0.836, 0.947, 0.625, and 0.956, respectively. Results demonstrated that the non-contact ultrasound measurement is a promising technology for rapid physical property measurement of Cheddar cheese. Further, due to its non-contact feature, economic and rapid on-line quality assessment of a wide range of food materials is possible.
Session 88C, Food Engineering: Physical and Chemical Properties
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