Vibration assisted cutting of Gouda cheese

Abstract

The influence of vibrations on the process of cheese cutting applied in order to reduce friction and the cutting force was studied. The forces needed to cut through the cheese samples were measured against the variations of the temperature, cutting speed, and vibration frequency. The hypothesis which induced the research work was that assisting vibrations reduce the cutting forces and make the cutting easier for the user. In the experiments,Goudacheese was used at 10°C and 22°C. The further, a conventional kitchen knife was used with four different cutting speeds from 12.5 mm/s to 75 mm/s and six vibration frequencies from 0 Hz to 150 Hz. The results confirmed the hypothesis presuming that up to 3.4 times lower forces are needed to cut through a cheese sample at 22°C, and 1.55 times lower when cutting cheese samples at 10°C. The results also confirmed the already known facts that the cutting forces increase with increasing cutting velocity, 2–4 times on average with cutting at 75 mm/s instead of 12.5 mm/s. Also, 2.5, times lower cutting forces were measured in cutting the cheese sample at 22°C instead at 10°C.