Simulation of Italian Pasta during its Industrial Production

Nowadays, there is a strong demand to adequately model non-newtonian fluids. The italian pasta is a well known example of these fluids. The authors once measured with special instrumentation the viscosity related to temperature and velocity gradients, tried out cfd potentialities to simulating non-Newtonian flows ruled by different constitutive equations. The paper will shows briefly the “ad hoc” viscosimeter, realised to be utilised in conjunction with the “pasta” moulder-extruders to capture the strong variability of the molecular viscosity of the fluid. The numerical simulations, based on the constitutive law derived from the experimental data, has been performed by the cfd code Star-CD. The numerical results have shown a good agreement with experimental measures.