Linear to Non-linear Rheology of Wheat Flour Dough
Trevor S. K. Ng, Gareth H. McKinley
Hatsopoulos Microfluids Laboratory, Dept of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Mahesh Padmanabhan
Kraft Foods Global Inc., 801 Waukegan Road, Glenview, Illinois 60025, USA

We provide an overview of transient extensional rheometry techniques for wheat flour
doughs in which the deformation and material response is well defined. The behavior of a
range of model doughs was explored with a Filament Stretching Extensional Rheometer
(FISER). The measurements were also compared to data obtained with a new wind-up
extensional rheometer; the SER universal testing platform. A simple empirical
constitutive equation, which allows characterization of the experimental results with a
small number of parameters, is presented to describe the resulting measurements. To
characterize the relaxation modulus of the doughs, small amplitude oscillatory tests were
performed on samples that have been shear-mixed in a mixograph for varying lengths of
time. The linear viscoelastic properties were found to exhibit a broad power-law
dependence on the imposed oscillatory frequency that is very reminiscent of that
exhibited by a critical gel. The critical gel model of Winter-Chambon [1, 2] was used as
the basis for constructing a non-linear constitutive equation for the material stress by
combining the relaxation modulus for the critical gel with a Lodge rubber-like liquid
form for the kinematics. Transient uniaxial extensional data recorded from the FISER and
SER instruments were then compared to the predictions of the constitutive equation. The
model captures the initial power-law response and subsequent strain-hardening; however
additional physics is required to describe the rheological phenomena at very large Hencky strains, including finite extensibility effects and filament rupture in extensional flows.