High-pressure processing is a powerful technology for food preservation. The knowledge of foods properties in the high-pressure range is important to develop and optimize such processes by means of mathematical modeling and simulation. Ultrasonic methods are rapid, non-invasive and can be used to characterize foods like edible oils (e.g., composition, purity, and quality assessment). In this paper, they were applied for the investigation of physicochemical properties of olive oil at high pressure at different temperatures. The sound wave velocity was measured by the pulse-transmission method and the corresponding oil density was additionally determined from the monitoring of sample volume change. Measurements were conducted in the pressure range up to 600 MPa, for temperatures from 20 to 50 °C. Intermolecular free length, isothermal and adiabatic compressibility versus pressure were calculated using measured sound speed and density isotherms. Discontinuities in the measured isotherms of sound speed and density versus pressure indicate the presence of liquid-to-solid phase transitions. The kinetics of the liquid-to-solid phase transition was also investigated. The transformation times of olive oil augment with increasing temperature. This study can be broadened to other liquid foodstuffs to investigate the influence of temperature on their physicochemical properties at high pressure.

This paper presents a theoretical study of the propagation behaviour of surface Love waves in nonhomogeneous functionally graded elastic materials, which is a vital problem in acoustics. The elastic properties (shear modulus) of a semi-infinite elastic half-space vary monotonically with the depth (distance from the surface of the material). Two Love wave waveguide structures are analyzed: 1) a nonhomogeneous elastic surface layer deposited on a homogeneous elastic substrate, and 2) a semi-infinite nonhomogeneous elastic half-space. The Direct Sturm-Liouville Problem that describes the propagation of Love waves in nonhomogeneous elastic functionally graded materials is formulated and solved 1) analytically in the case of the step profile, exponential profile and 1cosh²type profile, and 2) numerically in the case of the power type profiles (i.e. linear and quadratic), by using two numerical methods: i.e. a) Finite Difference Method, and b) Haskell-Thompson Transfer Matrix Method.The dispersion curves of phase and group velocity of surface Love waves in inhomogeneous elastic graded materials are evaluated. The integral formula for the group velocity of Love waves in nonhomogeneous elastic graded materials has been established. The results obtained in this paper can give a deeper insight into the nature of Love waves propagation in elastic nonhomogeneous functionally graded materials.

This article presents results of the high pressure Raman spectroscopy of triolein. Triolein, a triacylglyceride (TAG) of oleic acid, is an unsaturated fat, present in natural oils such as olive oil. As a basic food component and an energy storage molecule, it has considerable importance for food and fuel industries. To generate pressure in the experiment, we used a high-pressure cylindrical chamber with sapphire windows, presented in (R.M. Siegoczyński, R. Kościesza, D.B. Tefelski, and A. Kos, Molecular collapse – modification of the liquid structure induced by pressure in oleic acid, High Press. Res. 29 (2009), pp. 61–66). Pressure up to 750 MPa was applied. A Raman spectrometer in “macro”-configuration was employed. Raman spectroscopy provides information on changes of vibrational modes related to structural changes of triolein under pressure. Interesting changes in the triglyceride C‒H stretching region at 2650–3100 cm⁻¹ were observed under high-pressures. Changes were also observed in the ester carbonyl (C˭ O) stretching region 1700–1780 cm⁻¹ and the C‒C stretching region at 1050–1150 cm⁻¹. The overall luminescence of the sample decreased under pressure, making it possible to set longer spectrum acquisition time and obtain more details of the spectrum. The registered changes suggest that the high-pressure solid phase of triolein is organized as β-polymorphic, as was reported in (C. Akita, T. Kawaguchi, and F. Kaneko, Structural study on polymorphism of cis–unsaturated triacylglycerol: Triolein, J. Phys. Chem. B 110 (2006), pp. 4346–4353; E. Da Silva and D. Rousseau, Molecular order and thermodynamics of the solid–liquid transition in triglycerides via Raman spectroscopy, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 10 (2008), pp. 4606–4613) (with temperature-induced phase transitions). The research has shown that Raman spectroscopy in TAGs under pressure reveals useful information about its structural changes.