Numerical simulation of crust freezing in processed meat: A fully coupled solid–fluid approach

Abstract

We present a numerical model for the simulation of continuous impingement freezing of processed food products. This model is capable of fully describing the fluid dynamics of the non-isothermal flow field, including turbulence with conjugate heat transfer (CHT). The motion of the solid region is captured by advecting the solid rathe than employing a moving mesh algorithm, resulting in a model that is more computationally efficient. This methodology is implemented as a numerical solver using the well-known open-source library OpenFOAM. Our results confirm that the proposed model can provide detailed insight on the freezing process at a minimum computational cost.