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The production of puffed rice, like many other types of food, is incredibly complicated and involves multiple interconnected types of physics: mass transport, phase transitions, and plastic deformation. Professor Ashim Datta of Cornell University is leading a team to simulate the puffing of rice, treating it as a transport process in porous media with phase-dependent properties. Using a structural–thermal–CFD–RF coupling modeled in COMSOL Multiphysics^®, they were able to construct a framework for determining optimal conditions for a variety of puffing processes.

The research team further extended their simulation practices to study food safety by building simulation applications based on their models. The apps are used as a teaching tool that enables multidisciplinary learning where students can simulate many what-if scenarios realistically.