A Beng project aims to study the biomechanics of chewing and how Young's modulus affects the average particle size of the food.

1. Chewing it over: how elastic is the
food?
Beng final project
August 2022
Adedoyin Floyd Osinloye

2. Technical Aims
• Using five human participants to chew and spit out eight
different food types to calculate their average particle size
• Investigate potential correlations between participant’s age,
gender, and dental history and samples average particles size
• Determine Young’s modulus for each food sample using
mechanical testing and investigate the relationship between
Young’s modulus and the average particle size of the samples

3. Technical Background
Mastication is the scientific
term for chewing to break down
food in other to improve
swallowability
https://makeagif.com/i/FHzrOg https://www.nuclear-power.com/
Young’s modulus measures the stiffness of the food and is the slope of
the linear portion of their stress-strain curve. It also determines how
much resistance to deformation a material can take. If the
deformation is permanent, however, then this means that the material
is no longer elastic and is experiencing plastic deformation.

4. Experimental Methods

5. Chewing collection
http://medical3danimationcompany.com
Food
Doritos Chips
Tenderstem Broccoli Tips
Apple
Coconut
Cucumber
Carrots
Nature Valley Crunchy Granola Oats
Malted Milk Biscuits

6. Avg particle size collection
Step 1 Step 2 Step 3
Wet Sieving Freeze Drying
https://www.scalesgalore.com/
Electric scale

7. Young’s Modulus collection
• Compression test (speed 5 mm/min)
Fruit Core cylindrical tools Tinus Olsen compression test

8. Results produced

9. Young Modulus data
• Various food samples were subjected to compressive loads resulting in different Young modulus variations across the board
• Even samples from the same food type showed a different Young Modulus every time, even though the samples were similar
Test No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Apple E
[MPa]
2.38 4.26 3.92 5.14 3.88 3.34 1.98 3.18 3.96 4.06
Carrot E
[MPa]
3.74 4.42 4.29 6.87 4.58 4.11 4.22 4.95 3.99 5.22
Cucumber
E [MPa]
2.57 3.15 2.09 2.08 2.56 2.61 3.39 2.1 0.461 0.436
Coconut E
[MPa]
6.81 8.83 3.85 6.29 16.4 6.58 1.3 10.4 5.26 13.9
Broccoli E
[MPa]
3.54 1.82 4.1 4.83 4.78 4.08 4.22 2.56 2.08 1.65
Malt
Biscuit E
[MPa]
142 214 312 59.1 149 120 71.8 117 188 131
Granola
Bar E
[MPa]
188 146 90.6 69.7 121 73.5 86.2 45.4 93.4 141

10. Young Modulus data continued
• By using a box and whisker plot and the natural log, Ln, of the Young’s modulus it shows that there are outliers in carrot,
coconut, and cucumber
• Cucumber reports the lowest Young modulus and Malt biscuit reports the highest Young modulus
• Cucumber is less stiff and deforms quickly at lower load applied. Most elastic, ductile
• Malt Biscuit is stiffer and requires higher loads to deform. Least elastic, brittle

11. Conclusions
• Food textures are a significant factor in the food materials being
ductile or brittle based on the elasticity found by the Young’s
modulus
• The average particle size would be affected based on these
mechanical properties, not human factors
• Confirms that food textures are varied and require different
analysis methods depending on the food

12. Future work
• To consider viscoelasticity when determining the
Young’s modulus of the food sample being tested
• Compression test equipment tailored to food should be
ordered for a lab to provide an accurate technical
approach
• Numerical values of the average particle size should be
reported using the same freeze-drying method and
massing on a scale

13. Thank You