A coarse-grained multiscale model to simulate morphological changes of food-plant tissues undergoing drying

Abstract

Numerical modelling has emerged as a powerful and effective tool to study various dynamic behaviours of biological matter. Such numerical modelling tools have contributed to the optimisations of food drying parameters leading to higher quality end-products in the field of food engineering. In this context, one of the most recent developments is the meshfree-based numerical models, which have demonstrated enhanced capabilities to model cellular deformations during drying, providing many benefits compared to conventional grid-based modelling approaches. However, the potential extension of this method for simulating bulk level tissues has been a challenge due to the increased requirement for higher computational time and resources. As a solution for this, by incorporating meshfree features, a novel coarse-grained multiscale numerical model is proposed in this work to predict bulk level (macroscale) deformations of food-plant tissues during drying. Accordingly, realistic simulation of morphological changes of apple tissues can now be performed with just 2% of the previous computational time in microscale and macroscale simulations can also be conducted. Compared to contemporary multiscale models, this modelling approach provides more convenient computational implementation as well. Thus, this novel approach can be recommended for efficiently and accurately simulating morphological changes of cellular materials undergoing drying processes, while confirming its potential future expansion to efficiently and accurately predict morphological changes of heterogeneous plant tissues in different spatial scales.