(60f) Science of Cutting Multi-Layer Systems: An Inspiration from Our Kitchens

Cutting, slicing, and dicing are terms most of us are familiar with from our adventures in kitchen. In this talk, we will explore the topic of cutting, specifically in kitchen, with an aim to leverage the physics to optimize the force exerted in the process. While the existing literature presents work on physics of cutting, these are often on homogenous materials. However, most of the materials in kitchen are complex which comprises of multiple layers with different elastic modulus, fracture toughness and relative thickness like skin, pulp and seeds in fruits and vegetables. Hence, in this work we experimentally capture the force profiles while cutting and slicing of natural foods with a multilayer system for various fruits and vegetables. We also compare our experimental data with the existing force information available in the literature to estimate the optimum force by our experiments and compare to the existing data. It must be noted here that most of the existing data do not account for the multilayer system. Apart from that there is a huge variability in the nomenclature and the respective forces and the method of measuring these forces in literature, which makes the comparison a daunting task. Finally, we mathematically model this system by modification to the Atkin’s force model for cutting of homogeneous system, incorporating the complexities for a multilayer system and compare with our experimental results.