Contact and Fracture Elements as Components of the Rheological Memory of Solid Foods1

ABSTRACT Most solid foods are rheologically nonlinear and their mechanical response may depend on their deformation history. Such behavior can be represented by modifying the conventional rheological models with discontinuous components. It is demonstrated that linear elastic and viscous elements combined with contact and fracture elements can form consistent models applicable under a wide range of deformation histories. This provides an explanation for the memory phenomena based on the physical aspects of the deformation mechanism.