Crust density in bread baking: mathematical modelling and numerical solutions (Q924784)

The authors study a model which accounts for the formation of the crust during bread baking. In the first part of their paper, the authors explain the model they consider. The crust is the region at the surface of the material where the density is high. The dough is supposed to be liquid at the origin with a uniform bubbly structure. During the baking process, some bubbles may fracture because of the influence of the oven pressure. In the region where the bubbles collapse the density of the material increases. This leads to a moving boundary called the collapse boundary. The model also includes a region, outside the preceding one, where the water vaporizes, also limited by a moving boundary and called the vaporization boundary. The bubbles are supposed to be spherical. The model consists of a nonlinear evolution equation for the temperature. The spherical symmetry is here used and the problem is posed in a domain with moving boundary at \(r=r_{c}(t)\). The coefficients of this heat equation depend on the temperature itself or on the time parameter through the local density, the velocity of the collapse boundary, the heat conductivity and its first order derivative. The authors write the conservation laws for mass and heat on the moving boundary. This leads to a system of ode's which describe the evolution of this boundary. Finally, the vaporization boundary is governed by a Stefan condition. In order to simplify the problem, the authors use a rescaling approach and asymptotic expansions. They here determine the leading terms of the simplified model. The numerical resolution of the original problem is mainly based on a central difference approximation for the space variable and on the use of MATLAB solvers. In the final parts of the paper, the authors prove that this numerical method converges and they compare the numerical solutions of the original and of the approximate problems. They illustrate these comparisons with many figures. They also compare their results with experimental data. They finally characterize the factors which have an important effect on crust properties.