Oscillatory and simple shear flows of a flour-water dough: a constitutive model

We reported some dynamic and viscometric data on an Australia strong flour-water dough. In oscillatory shear flow experiments, we found the linear viscoelastic strain limit is extremely low, of O(10^–3), consistent with other published data on doughs. The relaxation spectrum derived from the dynamic data is broad, indicating the blend nature of dough. In the start-up of a simple shear flow, we found the shear stress increases nonlinearly with time to a peak value and then decreases rapidly, with no steady-state response. The concept of steady-state viscosity is not very meaningful here, unless the strain at which the measurements are taken is also specified. The stress peaks are strain-rate dependent; but they occur at a strain of O(10), for the strong flour/water dough used, over four decades of strain rates. The experimental data were used to construct a phenomenological model for dough, consisting of an hyperelastic term (representing the elastic gluten network of permanent cross-linked long chain polymers), and a viscoelastic contribution (representing the suspension of starch globules and other long-chain components in dough that are not parts of the permanent cross-linked gluten network). The model predictions compared favourably with experimental data in oscillatory and shear flows.