Fractal analysis of the flour

Abstract

The aim of the paper was the evaluation of the microscopic, powder samples of flour by utilizing the fractal analysis. The powder particles were compared and submitted to fractal analysis. Three types of flour were studied, smooth flour, semi-flour and thick flour. The five samples of each sort of flour were tested by fractal analysis. The samples were digitized by the digital microscope Motic DM 1802-A with software Motic Image Plus ver. 2.0. Each image was processed by the thresholding operation and the fractal analysis was realized by the software Harfa ver. 5.1.0 and the samples were compared by the correlation analysis. The obtained fractal dimensions described the segmentation and distribution of flour powder and the fractions of the flour. The fractal dimension of the smooth flour was DWBW = 1.29266, of the semi-flour DWBW = 1.70734 and of the thick flour DWBW = 1.57978. The smooth flour was composed of microscopic powder particles of wheat. Small particles of about 10 mm were mainly found in the smooth flour. However, sporadic particles greater than 47.6 mm were also observed. The size of the smooth flour particles was from 2.38 mm to 47.6 mm. The semi-flour contained mainly particles the size of up to 71.2 mm. Practically half the particles obtained from semi-flour were the size of up to 71.2 mm. The thick flour was created mainly by particles to the size of 73.78 mm. Greater particles, the size from 130.9 mm to 314.2 mm, were obtained in a small number. On the base of the particle distribution, the semi-flour and the thick flour were very similar, but on the base of fractal analysis they were different and we can distinguish them.

Keywords

• powder
• flour
• fractal analyse