Modeling and Simulation of Relevant Changes in Fermented Sausages during Ripening

This paper describes the extension of an authors’ previous mathematical model of sausage drying in order to account for volume shrinking during ripening, the development of a COMSOL Multiphysics®4.3 software code, the exploitation of the code outcomes and the validation of the code predictions against the results collected from a closely monitored and controlled batch production of “Salsiccia dolce”, a typical meat product of Calabria region, at the Dodaro factory. To catch the moving boundary at the air-salami interface during shrinking, the “moving mesh” physics was invoked in COMSOL Multiphysics®4.3 and a literature correlation was applied for the receding rate of sausage radius as a function of water removed. The results are discussed in terms of weight loss as well as space&time mapping of moisture and temperature in sausage. Interesting results are presented about the possibility of predicting the sausage shrinkage curve during ripening.