Scaling of sound emission energy and fracture behavior of cellular solid foods.

A detailed study was performed of the fracture behavior of toasted rusk rolls, a cellular solid food, at different water activities and morphologies. We find that the energies of the emitted sound pulses follow Gutenberg-Richter power laws with characteristic exponents b ~ 1.5 . The scaling exponents varied only within a range of 0.2 when the method of fracture, humidity, or morphology was changed. However, differences in b were observed, indicating nonuniversal behavior, that seems to be related to morphology and water activity. Also, power law scaling behavior was observed for the waiting time distributions with an exponent a ~ 1.9.