Process simulation for the food industry

A Fraunhofer software solution can simulate a large variety of food technology processes including shaping, homogenising, injection, kneading, pressing and stirring.

MESHFREE, developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM and the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI, provides an innovative software product for the mesh-free simulation of physical processes.

“With MESHFREE, we meet the challenges of the food industry with innovative ­simulation. Almost all of the processes and procedures relevant in industry practice can be computed and virtually realised with the software solution,” said Dr Jörg Kuhnert from the Fraunhofer ITWM. “In concrete terms, this means that companies optimise their processes on this basis and not only save resources, but also save money and time.”

MESHFREE is based on a general material model. This generality allows complex material behaviour to be modelled and treated using the same numerical methodology, regardless of whether the medium is liquid or solid. The specification of the material properties such as viscosity or elasticity in the form of a shear modulus is sufficient to compute the behaviour of the medium with MESHFREE. With MESHFREE it is possible to simulate coating, extrusion, forming, homogenising, injection, kneading, pressing or stirring processes.

The software combines the finite pointset method (FPM) for the solution of the conservation equations for mass, momentum and energy with efficient algorithms for solving linear systems of equations (SAMG). The user exports the geometry directly from common CAD tools and uses them for the simulation.

Since MESHFREE does not require any computational meshes, the software is very flexible in organising the compute points; mesh generation and the time-consuming adaptation of the network topology in highly dynamic processes — such as flows with free surfaces or fast-moving geometry elements — become dispensable.

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