Filip Oosterlinck

Morphology development of a polystyrene/ polymethylmethacrylate blend during start-up of uniaxial elongational flow

The morphology development of a polystyrene/polymethylmethacrylate blend has been investigated during uniaxial elongational flow. For this purpose linear conservative dichroism measurements are used to gather time-resolved information and scanning electron microscopy is performed on quenched samples. With the former technique the evolution of the droplet deformation in a semiconcentrated blend is studied in real time, whereas the latter technique was used for imaging individual droplets after the elongation. It is shown that the droplet deformation is affine for the conditions under investigation and that it is possible to predict the evolution of the dichroism by existing theories and the assumption of affine deformation. It has also been verified whether rheological measurements can be used to deduce morphological information during elongational flow, as this method has been succesfully applied previously in simple shear flow.

Fiber diameter control in electrospinning

A simple model is proposed to predict the fiber diameter in electrospinning. We show that the terminal diameter is determined by the kinetics of the jet elongation—under the influence of the electric and viscous forces—and the solvent evaporation. Numerical and simple scaling analyses are performed, predicting the fiber diameter to scale as a power 1/3 of viscosity and 2/3 of polymer solution throughput divided by electrical current. Model predictions show a good agreement to our own electrospinning experiments on polyamide-6 solutions as well as to the data available in the literature.

The interplay between the main flour constituents in the rheological behaviour of wheat flour dough

There is still considerable debate in the literature about the respective roles of starch and gluten in both the linear and non-linear rheology of wheat flour dough. Hence, to elucidate the individual contributions of gluten and starch to the overall dough behaviour, the rheological properties of dough and mixtures of different gluten-starch ratios were studied systematically in shear and extension, by means of an adequate rheological toolbox consisting of linear small amplitude oscillatory shear tests and non-linear tests such as creep-recovery in shear and uniaxial extension. The starch component plays a pivotal role in linear dough rheology. With increasing starch content, the linearity limit observed in oscillatory shear tests decreases as a power-law function. Starch also clearly affects the extensional viscosity at small strains. Consequently, in the linear region differences between different gluten systems may become obscured by the presence of starch. As breadmaking qualities are known to be intrinsically linked to the gluten network, it is imperative to probe the non-linear behaviour of dough in order to expose differences in flour quality. The quality differences between a strong and a weak flour type were revealed most clearly in the value of the strain-hardening index in uniaxial extension and the total recovery compliance in non-linear creep-recovery tests. Notwithstanding its earlier successful application to pure gluten gels, the accuracy of the critical gel model in predicting the linear rheological properties of dough was found to be limited, due to dough having a small linearity limit and a finite longest relaxation time.

The Impact of Water Content and Mixing Time on the Linear and Non-Linear Rheology of Wheat Flour Dough

The viscoelastic properties of wheat flour dough are known to be very sensitive to small changes in water content and mixing time. In this study the simple scaling law originally proposed by Hibberd (1970) [Rheol. Acta 9, 497-500] to capture the water dependency of the dynamic moduli in small amplitude oscillatory shear, was also applied to creep-recovery shear tests and extensional tests. The scaling law turns out to be valid not only in the linear region, but to a certain extent also in the non-linear region. At sufficiently high water levels, a ‘free’ water phase exists in dough, which attenuates the starch-starch and gluten-starch interactions. Dough characterisation after different mixing times shows that overmixing may cause a disaggregation or even depolymerisation of the gluten network. The network breakdown, as well as the subsequent (partial) recovery, are clearly reflected in the value of the strain-hardening index, for which a maximum is reached at a mixing time close to the optimum as determined with the Mixograph. Finally, the gluten proteins turn out to be much less susceptible to overmixing in an oxygen-lean environment, which demonstrates the significant role of oxygen in the degradation process.

Enhancing the Rheological Performance of Wheat Flour Dough with Glucose Oxidase, Transglutaminase or Supplementary Gluten

The enzymes glucose oxidase and transglutaminase are frequently used to improve the breadmaking performance of wheat flours, as they have the ability to considerably alter the viscoelastic nature of the gluten network. To evaluate a flour’s breadmaking performance, rheological tests offer an attractive framework. In this study, the rheological impact of adding glucose oxidase or transglutaminase to wheat flour dough is investigated by means of linear oscillatory shear tests, creep-recovery shear tests and startup extensional tests. The former tests reveal that the enzymes render the dough stiffer and enhance its elastic character, until saturation is reached. In the breadmaking process, the use of excessive amounts of enzyme is known to be counterproductive. The strain-hardening index clearly reveals this overcross-linking effect. Besides enzymes, the gluten network can also be reinforced by adding supplementary gluten, which was indeed found to enhance the extent of strain-hardening.