Simulation of salt diffusion in a

pork (bacon) side using 3D

imaging

R. Said, R. B. Schüller, P. Young, A. Aastveit and B. Egelandsdal

Comsol Conference, Grenoble, 23 - 24 October 2007
Simulation of salt diffusion in ‘bacon’ is a relatively complex task…!
A piece of pork side would consist of different regions of skin, meat, fat
and bone; each with diffusion coefficients that vary with orders of
magnitude. Adding to this complexity is the arbitrary shape and
topology of each region separately and combined.
How can I generate a volume mesh…?!

That is how I had to do it back in 1995 - It took me “days”…!

Direct Approach - from scan to model

Specimen
ScanIP

Scan/Image
processing

+ScanFE

Meshing

Comsol’s Model
Mesh generation from
3D image data
Scanning
Medical scanners
CT – Computerised tomography
MRI – Magnetic resonance
imaging
US – Ultra-sound

Industrial scanners
Industrial CT scanners
MicroCT
NanoCT

Any other modality that

generates values arranged
on a regular 3D grid
Direct Approach: 3D image-based meshing

Voxel = 3D pixel

Segmentation:
A→B
A B

Meshing:
C→D

C D
Marching cubes algorithm (in 2D)
0 0 100 0 0

0 140 255 180 0

127
180 0
0 245 150 0 0

0 10 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

Original pixel grid 180 Original pixel value (sample)

“Marching squares” grid 127 Iso-surface value
Isosurface at 127
Marching cubes & Iso-surface
Key advantages of Simpleware‘s approach
Multi-part meshing: robust automated mesh generation for topologies
of arbitrary complexity
Volume and topology preserving smoothing: the geometric accuracy
of mesh domains is only dependent on image accuracy
Meshes with guaranteed high quality element
Robust, automated and accurate surface and volume reconstruction
(STL and tetrahedral/ hybrid mesh).
Computational models for Multiphysics Simulation and/ or Fluid
Structure Interaction
The ability to assign material properties within a given structure
based on signal strength, for example based on cell density
Direct export to major Computational Simulation packages including
Comsol
Adaptive meshing (Volume & Surface), better user control will be
available in the ‘next release’
 Workflow:
Generating the mesh
Scanning and data acquisition

A typical piece of pork belly side was CT-

scanned at the Norwegian University of
Life Sciences using CT scanner (Siemens
Somatom Emotion- Siemens AG,
Erlangen, Germany)

Resolution on the 2D slices

is 0.5x0.5mm, and spacing
in the Z direction is 5mm.
Total number of slices is 37.
Image Processing and Segmentation
Meat Fat Bone

Three different domains are identified (fat, meat, bone) using the
“Threshold Segmentation Tool”.
Hounsfield Number values used: -253 to 13 for Fat, 14 to 136 for
Meat and 137 to 201for Bone.
Other segmentations tolls such as flood-fill are then used followed
by more morphology filtration and smoothing operations.
Mesh generation & Export to Comsol

Voxel mesh
123,228 ‘elements’

Cross section in the tetrahedral mesh;

consists of 844,163 elements, 169,765
nodes and 98,223 boundary faces
 Workflow:
3D Transient Diffusion - Comsol
Simulation of transient diffusion
Tetrahedral mesh as imported
by Comsol - three subdomains
Transient diffusion simulation
is carried out in COMSOL
assuming that the exterior of
the piece of meat is exposed
to a saturated Sodium Chloride
solution for 72 hours.
A second simulation is then
performed for a time period of
7 days (equilibration period)
where the initial condition
considered is the status of salt
concentration distribution after
the 72 hour salting period
 3D Transient diffusion – Analysis Setup

The initial salt concentration

was zero everywhere. The
boundary condition was
specified as:
C = 5440*flc1hs(t-60,15)
mol/m3

Analysis Setup

The Heaviside Step Function

was used to ensure smoothed
time-step transition
Boundary Condition Setup
Subdomain Setting - Meat

Volume mesh in +ScanFE; 77,989 node

Meat subdomain - Comsol

Meat subdomain setup

Subdomain Setting - Fat

Volume mesh in +ScanFE; 97,338 node

Fat subdomain – Comsol

Fat subdomain setup

Subdomain Setting - Bone

Volume mesh in +ScanFE; 20,008 node.

Bone subdomain - Comsol

Bone subdomain setup

Solver Manger – Equilibration Phase

External boundary condition

during the simulation of
equilibration period was set
to “Insulation/ Symmetric”

Solution after the salting period was used as starting

conditions for Equilibration Phase - lasting for 7 days.
Salt concentration at T = 3 hours Salt concentration at T = 6 hours

Salt concentration at T = 9 hours Salt concentration at T = 12 hours

Salt concentration at T = 15 hours Salt concentration at T = 1 Day

Salt concentration at T = 2 Days Salt concentration at T = 4 ½ Days

Salt concentration at the end of Equilibration Phase, T = 7 Days
Salt concentration on cross sections

Salt concentration after a

salting period of 72 hours

Salt concentration after 7 days of equilibration

Transient Mass Transfer – salt diffusion in a piece of pork
side over a period of 7 days after salting for 72 hours
Concluding remarks…
The Direct Approach for generating a volumetric mesh based on
3D images has proved to be a very effective and an efficient tool
for Computational Simulation in general…

Preliminary study indicates that the salt was not evenly distribution even
after 7 days equilibration period. This appears to be a long period, and
may indicate that the diffusion coefficients used are on the low side…!

However, the study has demonstrated that we now have very

efficient tools to handle this type mass transfer simulation in food
processing in general.

Future work will focus on using this efficient methodology to

examine how accurately we can predict salting time/final mean
salt concentration in various belly sides and validate this again
sodium chloride measurements on dissected samples of the
sides.
Thank you