An iterative approach is taken to develop a fractal topology that can describe the material structure of phase changing materials. Transfer functions and frequency response functions based on fractional calculus are used to describe this topology and then applied to model phase transformations in liquid/solid transitions in physical processes. Three types of transformation are tested experimentally, whipping of cream (rheopexy), solidification of gelatine and melting of ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA). A liquid-type model is used throughout the cream whipping process while liquid and solid models are required for gelatine and EVA to capture the yield characteristic of these materials.

An identification procedure to simultaneously determine electrorheological (ER) and viscous characteristics of an ER fluid is presented. The analysis is performed under unsteady flow conditions with randomly varying electric field and intermittent solidification of the fluid. Tests conducted using a standard viscometer and cylindrical couette geometry indicate that there is some interaction between viscous and ER effects and that some residual structuring persists in the fluid after removal of the electric field.

Pollution is monitored in the ecosystem with methods that aim to capture the presence of pollutants. However, risk assessment is more oriented to develop sensitive metrics that rely on Novel Approach Methodologies (NAMs) which can support existing methods and offer mechanistic insight to the action of pollutants. Feeding is a phenotypic endpoint assessed in many organisms to describe changes in their physiology. For daphnids, feeding is usually quantified with assays employing large volumes and long incubation periods or even cumbersome techniques. In this paper we present a more robust and a faster method to assess feeding with simple fluorescence measurements based on the consumption of algae. The optimized protocol has been tested in a range of pollutants and feeding has proved to be a sensitive indicator for non-lethal exposures.