Modeling and Simulation of Hamburger Cooking Process Using Finite Difference and CFD Methods

Unsteady-state heat transfer in hamburger cooking process was modeled using one dimensional finite difference (FD) and three dimensional computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models. A double-sided cooking system was designed to study the effect of pressure and oven temperature on the cooking process. Three different oven temperatures (114, 152, 204°C) and three different pressures (20, 332, 570 pa) were selected and 9 experiments were performed. Applying pressure to hamburger increases the contact area of hamburger with heating plate and hence the heat transfer rate to the hamburger was increased and caused the weight loss due to water evaporation and decreasing cooking time, while increasing oven temperature led to increasing weight loss and decreasing cooking time. CFD predicted results were in good agreement with the experimental results than the finite difference (FD) ones. But considering the long time needed for CFD model to simulate the cooking process (about 1 hour), using the finite difference model would be more economic.