Thomas Steglich, PhD student at Structure and Material Design unit at SIK.

Structure and dynamics in carbohydrate rich food materials

Thomas Steglich started as a PhD student during the spring of 2011 within the SuMo competence centre, associated with the department for Structure and material design at SIK.

Hydration of biomaterials is directly related to processes of water and heat transportation, changes in phase behaviour and relative volume of the complex composite systems. In the case of food material, these changes occur not only during, but even after the hydration, leading to changes of the observed textural properties. However, how these changes of macroscopic properties are related to the microscopic structural and dynamical properties on a different length-scale is less investigated and therefore only poorly understood. Pasta will be used as a model system, as it is a worldwide popular carbohydrate-based food product.

The main goal of this project is to control the product quality by choosing a combination of raw material and process adoptions. The microstructure of the pasta shall be designed in order to create desired quality properties and the mass transport shall be controlled at different heating profiles.

Curriculum Vitae