Abstract
3D food printing is a rapidly emerging technology that offers a variety of benefits such as fabrication of aesthetically pleasing food, customization of nutrients based on individual needs, modification of internal structures of the food, and improvement of food sustainability. Despite the increased interest and potential applications of 3D food printing, however, there remain some challenges to be addressed before the technology can be advanced to a point of widespread adoption. In order to realize the full potentials of 3D food printing, we identified three areas of studies that need to be developed: 1) the development of methods to formulate 3D-printable food inks, 2) the development of methods to control textures of 3D-printed foods, and 3) the invention of tools that enable multi-material printing of food materials. It remains an unanswered question what design strategies we can adopt to enhance the capabilities of 3D food printing. In this thesis, we present an engineering design approach to enhance the capabilities in all three fields we defined; specifically, our engineering goals are 1) the development of printable food inks by rheology design, 2) the design of food texture using predictive technique and 3) the engineering of device capable to perform multi-material 3D food printing by nozzle design. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of 3D printing of food, rheology in food and texture of food. Chapter 2 to Chapter 4 focus on the first engineering goal where we describe the method to perform 3D food printing by controlling the rheological properties of the food inks: Chapter 2 discusses the effect of particle concentration on the rheology of food inks. Chapter 3 examines the effect of oil content on the printability of food inks. Chapter 4 discusses effect of particle v size on the printability of food inks. Chapter 5 focuses on the second engineering goal, describing the use of 3D printing and mathematical approaches to fabricate food with desired textures. Chapter 6 focuses on the third engineering goal where we describe the use of a multichannels nozzle to perform multi-material 3D food printing. Lastly, Chapter 7 summarizes the results of this work and highlights future works.