Professional Documents
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Flanders Centre of Postharvest Technology/BIOSYST-MeBioS, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 30, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium
School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 4 May 2010
Received in revised form 20 October 2010
Accepted 23 October 2010
Available online 2 November 2010
Keywords:
Finite element
Model
Single cell compression
Tomato cell
Micromanipulation
Texture
Fruit
a b s t r a c t
A nite element model was developed to simulate compression experiments on single tomato cells from
suspension cultures. The cell was modelled as a thin-walled liquid-lled sphere with a permeable wall
allowing ow of uid out in response to internal turgor increases due to the compression. The permeability of the cell wall/plasma lemma was considered to be constant throughout compression. The contact
between cell and compression probe was modelled using a soft contact boundary condition. The cytoplast
was represented as an internal pressure acting on the plasma lemma and cell wall. Assuming linear
elastic constitutive behaviour for the cell wall, and using previously determined cell wall material parameters, the model was found to be remarkably capable of reproducing the forcedeformation behaviour
of a single cell in compression, as well as its deformed shape, even for large strains. The model might be
used as a building block to construct more comprehensive tissue deformation models.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Fruit and vegetables are an important component of the human
diet and consumers usually expect such produce to be of premium
quality. Texture is a major quality attribute and inuences
consumer acceptance, shelf-life, resistance, and transportability
(Seymour et al., 2002). The texture of plant produce and its susceptibility to damage are determined by its mechanical properties.
There is an enormous body of the literature relating to this but
until recently a continuum approach has usually been adopted,
in which it is assumed that the properties of the material are independent of the spatial scale of observation (Ghysels et al., 2009). As
such, the classical techniques for determination of the basic
mechanical properties of these materials have been essentially
the same as those applied for standard engineering materials. Such
approaches, while they admittedly have been applied with some
success, have always been weak in legitimacy. The major concern
is that, unlike traditional engineering materials, plant tissue has a
highly complex hierarchical structure. For example, a fruit such as
a tomato consists of a complex conglomerate of different tissues
(e.g. skin, cortex, core, seeds, etc.), and each tissue has many microscopic constituents such as cells, the middle lamella and interstitial
spaces. The macroscopic mechanical properties of the fruit depend
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: bart.nicolai@biw.kuleuven.be (B. Nicola).
0260-8774/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2010.10.023
266
267
Fig. 1. Steps in the acquisition of digitized contours of the deformed cells. First, a series of still images was obtained from the movie of the experiment (a), the boundary of
each cell was then carefully marked on the images (b). The cell image was then further enhanced to allow easy boundary detection by the image analysis program (c). The
nal digitized contour was eventually acquired using the MATLAB image analysis programs (d).
bar
Inflated cell
2ri
cell
r0
Fig. 2. Schematic view of the cell compression. An uninated (zero turgor pressure)
cell with outer radius r0 is rst inated to a radius ri by raising its internal pressure
to a prescribed initial turgor pressure. The ination is then followed by compression
under a at rigid (probe) surface at compression velocity v.
dV Lp
SDP Dp
dz
v
dV Lp
SP
dz
v
pcontact AeB:g
268
where g is the gap between the contacting surfaces (the at bar and
the surface of the cell). The constants A and B have no physical
meaning and should be selected carefully. The value of A should
be of the same order as the expected contact pressure. The constant
B must be large enough not to cause any signicant forces over
physically important gap distances; however, excessively large values would increase the nonlinearity of the problem, which might be
detrimental to the convergence. The soft contact procedure was
implemented directly as a boundary expression to the boundary
where contact is expected. For these models, after examining the local maxima of the pressures on the cell wall for several combinations of the two parameters, a value of 9 MPa was used for A and
B was set to 5 107 m1.
2.3.3. Material properties
The cell wall was modelled as isotropic and elastic (Hookean)
material with the following material properties: cell wall density
qw 1000 kg m3 (by assumption); hydraulic conductivity Lp =
4.64 1013 m (s Pa)1 (Maggio and Joly, 1995) Youngs modulus
E = 2.3 109 Pa (Wang et al., 2004); Poissons ratio m 0:4 (Wang
et al., 2004). The liquid inside the cell was assumed to be
incompressible and with similar properties to water (density
qf 1000 kg m3 ; bulk modulus Kf = 2 109 Pa).
2.3.4. Constraints and loads
During the ination phase of the model, a pressure load is applied to the internal boundary equal to the prescribed initial turgor
pressure. The initial turgor was adopted from Wang et al. (2004) as
0.363 MPa. During the compression stage, the soft contact conditions are applied to the external boundary. The rigid probe surface
is lowered in a series of downward displacement steps of 0.2 lm.
The active area and pressure are recalculated at every step and
the volume loss is accounted for through a boundary expression
on the internal wall boundary according to Eq. (2). Careful consideration should be given to the fact that not only the volume loss
depends on the pressure resulting from the direct FE solution, this
pressure in turn is also inuenced by the calculated volume loss.
So, instead of determining the volume loss in a single step, one
must do this iteratively (Smith et al., 1998). Hence, an iteration cycle was implemented in this model with a set minimum difference
between two subsequent values for the pressure as a stop criterion.
2.3.5. Implementation
The nite element mesh for the FE model was produced using
quadratic Lagrange elements (Fig. 3). The model contained a total
of 795 elements. Fig. 3a shows a portion of the mesh from the
top of the cell model. In order to determine the adequateness of
the mesh density, preliminary analysis results were compared to
the results obtained with a ner mesh (Fig. 3b). The results were
Fig. 4. Typical deformed shape plot of the cell after compression. Cell initial
diameter = 62 lm. A surface plot of the von Mises stresses is also included (grey
scale). The von Mises stresses are highest at the edge of the contact surface (approx.
0.5 GPa) and lowest at the centre of the contact surface (approx. 13 MPa).
Fig. 3. A zoom view of the mesh of the cell model from the top end. The mesh in (a) was used in the formulation while the ner mesh in (b) was used to assess the
adequateness of the mesh density.
269
d1
r i z
ri
where z refers to the vertical displacement of the cell surface in contact with the at object and ri is the initial outer radius of the cell
after ination and before compression. There is a remarkable agreement between the FE model and experiment in the lower deformation ranges, up to a fractional deformation of approximately 0.2. At
this stage a systematic departure clearly occurs with the real cell
prole appearing to atten and follow a more straightened prole
until the cell bursts.
3.1.2. Deformed shapes of the cell
Fig. 6 shows a comparison of the deformed shapes of the cell in
the compression experiment (obtained from image analysis and
digitization of real cell images) to those generated with the FE
model for a series of stages of the compression (indicated by the
fractional deformations). In agreement with forcedeformation
curve discussed above, the FE model makes a very accurate prediction of the deformed shapes of the cell compression in the lower
deformation ranges. From the gure, cell shapes of fractional deformations up to 0.23 are predicted reasonably accurately by the
model. At higher deformations the model predictions start to depart systematically from the measured data; the latter show a
higher lateral expansion than the former.
The validation results show that the FE model is capable of
accurately predicting the force deformation behaviour of a cell
undergoing small to moderate compression and hence would be
useful for determining the mechanical properties of the cell. The
discrepancy between the model and the actual cell experiments
at larger deformations is understandable, because at that stage
the cell is nearing bursting. A possible interpretation of this
behaviour would be that, at these rates of compression, the cell
displacement. The undeformed (but inated) shape of the cell is included for comparison. The von Mises stresses are calculated from
the stress components and may be used to predict whether the
(ductile) material may yield (Barber, 2002). Here the von Mises
stresses appear to reach a maximum at the edge of the contact surface with the at rigid manipulator, suggesting that cell bursting
would occur at this edge (assuming the cell wall material is
ductile).
3.1. Validation of the FE model
3.1.1. Forcedeformation curves
Fig. 5 shows a comparison of the results of the FE model to those
of experiment. In the gure the external applied force is plotted
-5
-5
x 10
4.5
4.5
-5
x 10
4.5
3.5
3.5
3.5
2.5
2.5
2.5
1.5
1.5
1.5
= 0.00
= 0.085
0.5
0.5
1.5
2.5
3.5
4.5
0.5
0
0
0.5
1.5
2.5
3.5
4.5
-5
-5
0
0
x 10
4.5
3.5
3.5
2.5
2.5
2.5
1.5
1.5
1.5
= 0.230
0
0
= 0.394
0.5
0.5
1.5
2.5
3.5
4.5
2.5
3.5
0
0
0.5
4.5
x 10
1
0.5
1.5
-5
2.5
3.5
4.5
-5
x 10
x 10
simulation
-5
3.5
1.5
-5
4.5
0.5
x 10
-5
-5
x 10
0.5
x 10
x 10
4.5
= 0.162
0.5
0
0
x 10
0
0
= 0.443
0.5
1.5
2.5
3.5
4.5
-5
x 10
experiment
Fig. 6. Comparison of the deformed shapes of the real cells to those of the FE model at different stages of the cell compression. d is the fractional deformation of the cell.
r0 = 62 lm; h0 = 126 nm; qw = 1000 kg m3; Lp = 4.64 1013 m (s Pa)1; E = 2.3 109 Pa; P0 = 3.63 105 Pa; m = 0.4 and v = 23 lm s1. Dimensions in the gure are metres.
0.0045
Turgor Pressure = 0.363 M Pa
0.004
Force (N)
270
0.0035
0.003
0.0025
0.002
0.0015
0.001
0.0005
0
5.0E-03
Force (N)
4.0E-03
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
Fractional Deformation
0.3
0.35
Fig. 8. Inuence of the initial turgor pressure on the forcedeformation of the cell
FE model. r0 = 62 lm; h0 = 126 nm; qw = 1000 kg m3; Lp = 4.64 1013 m (s Pa)1;
E = 2.3 109 Pa; m = 0.4 and v = 23 lm s1.
3.0E-03
4. Discussion
2.0E-03
1.0E-03
0.0E+00
0.00
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.25
Fractional deformation
0.30
0.35
The nite element model developed in this manuscript is equivalent to the model of Wang et al. (2004) and incorporates the same
physics. However, unlike the latter which essentially is an analytical model, the main advantage of the nite element model is that
other constitutive equations for the mechanical behaviour of the
cell wall material can be incorporated easily. Further, it is sufciently exible to serve as a building block for a more comprehensive numerical model of tissue deformation. Such a model may
271
0.50
b 5.776E-14
0.45
5.774E-14
0.40
5.772E-14
0.35
5.770E-14
0.30
4.81E-11
4.81E-11
5.768E-14
Volume (m)
Dimensionless Force
4.64E-13
4.64E-13
0.25
0.00E+00
0.20
1.00E-08
1.00E-08
0.15
5.766E-14
5.764E-14
4.81E-11
5.762E-14
4.64E-13
0.10
5.760E-14
0.00E+00
0.05
5.758E-14
0.00
0.00
1.00E-08
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.25
0.30
0.35
5.756E-14
0.00
0.05
Fractional deformation
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.25
Fractional deformation
0.30
0.35
Fig. 9. Inuence of the hydraulic conductivity on the forcedeformation (a) and the volume (b) of the cell FE model. r0 = 62 lm; h0 = 126 nm; qw = 1000 kg m3;
E = 2.3 109 Pa; P0 = 3.63 105 Pa; m = 0.4 and v = 23 lm s1.
272
this nite element model can serve as a building block for a more
comprehensive numerical model of tissue deformation. Such a
model can be used to improve our understanding of the
forcedeformation behaviour of fruit and vegetable tissue under
mechanical loading. This might guide to better postharvest handling practices for fruit and vegetables or inspire the development
of novel techniques to measure their texture properties.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the Research Council of the K.U. Leuven (OT 08/023), the Flanders Fund for Scientic Research (Project
G.0603.08; 3E060094) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council, UK for nancial support.
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