Investigating Shrinkage of Large CookedBeef Joints During Air-blast Cooling byComputer Vision

摘要

The objective of this study is to investigate the shrinkage of large cookedbeef joints during air-blast cooling process. Images of the cooked beef joints wereacquired and boundaries of the beef joints were extracted with a computer visionsystem. Shrinkage was assumed to occur along heat flow lines, represented bypower curves inside the cooked beef joints. Lengths of the power curves before andafter the cooling were calculated and the linear transformations of the lengths of thecurves were obtained. Results indicated that shrinkage of the cooked beef jointswere affected mainly by the initial moisture content and lengths of power curves priorto cooling. Information obtained from this work might enable beef manufactures topredict shapes of cooked beef joints after cooling and possibly moisture loss causedby the cooling process.