A penetration test could well be considered the most simple of all tests; as the size of the probe surface area is constant, this often means that the sample size does not need to be carefully controlled unlike compression testing.
However, when faced with a non-homogeneous product penetration is highly compromised as a smaller surface area for measurement is also more sensitive to variations in sample structure and low reproduceability and misleading data is obtained.
Results may show a wide variance between maximum and minimum forces depending on whether the probe meets with, for example, an air pocket, hard particle or internal structure variation.
Once product developers have formulated a winning ‘noisy’ food product, the aim would be to ensure the consistency of this signature quality of the product during manufacture.
Every brand knows that importance of consumer loyalty lies in the consistency of their product quality, be it flavour, appearance or texture. So the measurement of a product's acoustic signature is key to determining the gold standard product ‘noise’ for the purpose of quality control of all future batches of the product.
This post follows on from our previous blog post entitled When sound is a product's signature and provides a few application examples of the measurement of acoustic emission.
