Inter-particle Force Modelling to Simulate Noodle Dough Using DEM

Yui Sasaki, Kenya Kuwagi, Mei Kawahara and Yasuo Suzuki

The 10th International Conference on Discrete Element Methods (DEM10)

The Society of Powder Technology, Japan

Arcrea HIMEJI

Various machines are used in the manufacturing process of noodles, one of the staple foods in Japan. One of these machines is a kneading machine that makes noodle dough. Kneading machines are optimally designed for a specified input amount. Therefore, if the input amount is small, the machine will run idle and it will be difficult to knead the dough. When a small order is received, only the amount of dough that is preset in the machine is kneaded, and the unnecessary dough is discarded. This is because the mixing blades of the kneading machine are optimally designed only for the specified input amount. To solve this problem, it is necessary to improve the mixing blades so that they can handle various input amounts. Numerical simulation is effective for examining the shape. In this study, we applied DEM (discrete element method), which treats dough as an aggregate of particles. In order to examine whether the behavior of the dough in DEM can be reproduced by simulation, compression tests were performed in experiments and simulations. Figure 1 shows a comparison between the results of the compression simulation and the experimental results. As can be seen from the figure, the simulation results (red) using the adhesive force adjustment coefficient x = 90 show a large increase in pressure in the area of ​​small displacement, forming an N-shaped curve, but such characteristics are not observed in the experimental results shown in black. Therefore, we examined the pressure history. After applying pressure to a displacement of d = 6 mm, the load cell was raised, the crosshead was returned to its original position, and then pressure was reapplied. The results are shown in blue. Pressurization and depressurization took different paths, and a different pressure rise was observed during repressurization compared to the initial pressurization. The results during repressurization were close to the experimental results.