Potential for damage to fruits during transport through cross-section constrictions

Fruit preparations are used in various forms in the food industry. For example, they are used as an ingredient
in dairy products such as yogurt with added fruit. The dispersed fruit pieces can be described as soft
particles with viscoelastic material behavior. The continuous phase is represented by fluids with complex flow
behavior depending on the formulation. Characterization has shown that the fluids exhibit a yield stress and
pseudoplastic behavior, which can be described by the Herschel–Bulkley model. Since damage to fruit pieces
is undesirable in industrial transport processes, the potential for damage to fruit pieces during transport of
pipes in cross-sectional constrictions is analyzed. The analysis is performed numerically using the homogenized
lattice Boltzmann method and validated by an experiment on industrial fruit preparations at pilot plant scale.
The results show a strong dependence of the damage potential on the (local) Metzner–Reed Reynolds number.