Estimating Viscosity and Density of Ternary Solution Based on Least-Squares B-Spline Approximation

On-line measurement of physical parameters of solution means a great deal in the osmotic dehydration process of food. The authors previously developed the multifunctional sensing technique for on-line estimating the concentrations of two components in ternary solution with NaCl and sucrose. With this study aims at estimating the viscosity of such interested ternary solution, the estimation approach which is based on least-squares B-spline approximation, is carried out. In one mode of using total experimental data as calibration data and validation data, the relative deviations of the estimated viscosities are less than plusmn2.08%; in another mode of using partial experimental data as calibration data with total experimental data as validation data, the relative deviations are less than plusmn3.46%. Also the density of the interested ternary solution can be estimated with the deviations less than plusmn 0.1% by using the proposed approach. The experimental results with a satisfactory accuracy show the efficiency of the proposed approach for its perfect global performance.