Structural relaxation and physical ageing of starchy materials

Abstract The structural relaxation during the ageing of an amorphous maltose and a starch–sorbitol mixture was examined using a range of physical techniques. Heat capacity, measured by differential scanning calorimetry, showed an overshoot in the glass-transition region, the size of which was temperature and time dependent. Volume relaxation measurements were made at different ageing temperatures in the range T g −15 to −30 K. The volume decreased with increasing ageing time, in an essentially linear fashion with log time. The mechanical behaviour of the materials showed a progressive embrittlement on ageing. For both materials, the mechanical relaxation time increased with ageing, and the material became stiffer. Investigation of the effect of physical ageing on transport properties was also performed using conductivity measurements on a maltose–water–KC1 mixture. A decay in conductivity, which was almost linear with log time, was observed. The structural relaxation was modelled using the Tool–Narayanaswamy approach to describe the calorimetric data.