Udon is one of the most popular noodles in Japan. In order to make a dough, wheat flour and salty water are mixed and kneaded. For this process, a kneading machine is used industrially. A kneading machine consists of kneading blades and container. A kneading machine is optimally designed for predetermined input. If an input is less than the predetermined one, a dough cannot be sufficiently kneaded because it runs idle between kneading blades. When a small amount is ordered, the amount predetermined for the machine is kneaded and then the unnecessary dough is discarded. In order to resolve this problem, it is necessary to improve the shapes of kneading blades and container which can apply various inputs. Here, numerical simulation is useful to examine various shapes. In this study, we applied DEM (Discrete Element Method) which treats dough as an aggregate of particles. The inter-particle force is important to simulate the behavior of dough with DEM. We adopted the liquid bridging model and the JKR (Johnson-Kendall-Roberts) contact model. Compression test was conducted in both a simulation and an experiment.
