{"id":10645,"date":"2026-04-09T14:21:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T14:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/portfolio\/sicong-zhu\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T07:20:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T07:20:58","slug":"sicong-zhu","status":"publish","type":"us_portfolio","link":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/portfolio\/sicong-zhu\/","title":{"rendered":"Sicong Zhu"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":12536,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"us_portfolio_category":[45],"class_list":["post-10645","us_portfolio","type-us_portfolio","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","us_portfolio_category-new-template"],"acf":{"naam_van_het_proefschift":"3D Food Printing","samenvatting":"Er is geen Nederlandse samenvatting beschikbaar. De Engelse samenvatting vind je <a href=\"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/portfolio\/sicong-zhu\/\">hier<\/a>.","summary":"3D food printing is an emerging technology that allows building of 3D food structures via layer-by-layer deposition following a digital design. Hitherto, most research related to 3D food printing focused on exploration of suitable recipes and optimal printing parameters for making custom-shaped 3D-printed foods, such as chocolates, cookies, cheese and vegetable pastes. Although the previous studies broadened the scope of 3D food printing applications, they did not provide rational guidelines to replace trial-and-error strategies during optimization of new 3D food printing applications. Moreover, most efforts focused on customization of the food design whereas 3D printing also had been suggested to allow preparation of foods with altered perceived texture and taste. The few studies that showed the impact of 3D printed food design on texture properties did primarily employ instrumental analysis while not being complemented with sensory texture and mouthfeel perception. This study therefore aimed at understanding the relationships between material properties, printing conditions and the resulting properties of printed foods (Chapter 2 and 3), and how 3D food printing can be used to affect texture and taste perception of foods through modulating food structure (Chapter 4, 5 and 6).\n\nIn Chapter 2, tomato puree was applied as a model food material to investigate the correlations between the rheological properties and printability (dispensability and stability) of a material during the extrusion-based printing process. Results showed that the flow point of food material as determined by amplitude sweep oscillatory rheology measurements can be used to predict the printing stability of water-based model foods (tomato pastes) and other commercial food pastes (aqueous- or fat-based). Unfortunately, the flow point could not be used to predict dispensability of fat-based formulations. Based on the findings, a guideline was proposed to develop aqueous food recipes with desired printability based on flow stress measured by shear rheology.\n\nChapter 3 describes our study on the potential of binder jet 3D printing. It was possible to produce products with food ingredients, but the component mixture strongly determined whether this technique could be applied successfully. Mixtures of CaCas, starch and MCT were taken as model components. The addition of starch to CaCas formulations was found to effectively enable the binder jet printing process by reducing the surface swelling caused by hydration of CaCas powders. Results showed that increasing deposited binder content led to a more cohesive printed foods, while increasing CaCas content in dry powder mixtures contributed to the springiness of the final product.\n\nChapter 4 investigated how shearing profiles induced by extrusion speed and nozzle geometry, influenced fibrous structure formation of SC\/SA blends. Result showed that both printing speed and nozzle geometry could be used to steer the morphology of the smaller micro-scale fibrous filaments. By designing a parallel printing path in the longitudinal direction, a macro-scale fibrous structure consisting of parallel printed filaments was achieved. Both the calcium content in the fluid gel bath and the geometry of printing nozzles were found to influence the fusion of neighbouring printed filaments. The study shows that anisotropic structures can be created by extrusion-based 3D printing of phase-separated sodium caseinate - sodium alginate blends, and the obtained anisotropic structure might become relevant when striving for meat analogues made by 3D-printing.\n\nThe findings in Chapters 5 & 6 indicate the feasibility to apply 3D printing to alter sensory perception of food products. In Chapter 5, we investigated how sweetness, creaminess, expected fullness and liking of chocolate coated rice waffles were influenced by bite-to-bite variation in chocolate thickness. We first evaluated sensory attributes of rice waffles with a homogeneous chocolate coating. The panel found that increased thickness of chocolate coating led to sweeter and creamier sensation of rice waffles. Based on the study, we designed seven chocolate coated rice waffles containing a constant total chocolate amount but different chocolate thicknesses between three sequential bites. Significant but small effects on sweetness, expected fullness and liking were found when changing the order of chocolate thickness between bites. The observed sweetness and creaminess perception was related to a perceptual contrast mechanism. The study showed that sweetness of chocolate coated rice waffles can be modified without changing the overall amount of chocolate consumed.\n\nChapter 6 investigated the influence of the macroscopic structure of 3D printed protein bars with chocolate fillings on instrumental texture properties and sensory perception. Protein bars with different printing patterns (layered, rectilinear and concentric) were prepared by extrusion-based 3D printing. Among protein bars with different printing patterns, the ones with concentric chocolate infill pattern were the hardest. The liking and perceived chewiness of printed protein bars were however not influenced by the spatial distribution of the chocolate infill pattern. The study demonstrated that by changing the macroscopic structure (printing pattern) of 3D printed protein bars with chocolate fillings, both instrumental measured hardness and perceived hardness can be modified.\n\nChapter 7 provided an overall discussion of all results described in this thesis. First the interplay between material properties, printing conditions and physical properties of 3D printed foods was discussed. Then, possibilities and practical solutions to ensure a smooth printing process were described. We further illustrated how 3D food printing can be used to modulate food structure, texture and taste, and how 3D printing can contribute to development of healthier food products.","auteur":"Sicong Zhu","auteur_slug":"sicong-zhu","publicatiedatum":"22 juni 2022","taal":"EN","url_flipbook":"https:\/\/ebook.proefschriftmaken.nl\/ebook\/sicongzhu?iframe=true","url_download_pdf":"","url_epub":"","ordernummer":"FTP-202604091419","isbn":"978-94-6447-218-9","doi_nummer":"","naam_universiteit":"Wageningen University","afbeeldingen":12536,"naam_student:":"","binnenwerk":"","universiteit":"Wageningen University","cover":"","afwerking":"","cover_afwerking":"","design":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/10645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/us_portfolio"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/10645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10646,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/10645\/revisions\/10646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"us_portfolio_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio_category?post=10645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}