EAGER: Edible Mechanical Metamaterials via 3D Printing for Enhanced Food Properties

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

Printing of food has the potential to revolutionize how food is processed and experienced, offering reduced environmental impact and improved health benefits. Despite promising future advances and consumer demand, however, existing food 3D-printing research is often limited to empirical testing of materials and printing techniques without an underlying understanding of food mechanics. This EArly-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) research project aims to determine the role of structure on the mechanical properties of food, ultimately leading to edible mechanical metamaterials with enhanced and tunable food properties not achievable via conventional methods. The success of this project will create opportunities to explore healthier, more sustainable, and lower-cost food products. Exacerbated by the growing climate crisis and increasing global population, food insecurity and hunger are on the rise, with 3.1 billion people - 40 percent of the world’s population - unable to afford a healthy diet. An understanding of food mechanics will allow feasible scale-up and democratization of innovative food solutions for global and societal health challenges, including obesity, malnutrition, and diabetes, by tailoring for texture, taste, and nutrition. This work will also promote manufacturing methods that reduce food waste; ultimately, efficient processing and design of food will play a significant role in mitigating the effects of the climate crisis, with implications for human health. In terms of educational broader impacts, the funding will contribute to training of students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The objective of this research is to develop structure-property correlations for printable, edible food (technically mechanical metamaterials) with tailored structural properties that are not achievable via conventional methods. Because mastication involves different mechanical processes such as biting, chewing, and swallowing, the characterization and quantification of the relation between food and its structure at the micro- and macroscale will advance the field’s understanding of food quality and perception. A computational modeling framework accounting for these relationships would allow for a systematic approach in designing and validating 3D-printed food structures. This research will be executed in three concurrent thrusts. First, the microstructural mechanics of 3D-printed food structures will be characterized. Second, the resulting macrostructural mechanics will be evaluated. Finally, mechanics-based models for design and optimization of 3D-printed “meta-foods” will be developed. The multiscale modeling and understanding of food’s intricate, multicomponent nature would be translatable to other complex materials and applications, especially in the fields of computational biology and biomechanics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.