A novel approach for distinguishing the viscoelastic and thixotropic phenomena of predisturbed and intact networks at short and long timescales of observation was proposed using stress relaxation, creep/recovery, single shear decay, and in-shear structural recovery experiments. The method was able to illustrate the connections patterns of the internal microstructure of hydrocolloids and its alteration over time. To test the universality of the new approach, we studied seven commercial and four emerging hydrocolloids. Moreover, to find out the correlation between the proposed parameters from this approach and the fundamental rheological parameters of the selected hydrocolloids, a principal component analysis (PCA) was employed, which showed an excellent correlation between the parameters of all hydrocolloids in predisturbed and intact states at short and long timescales. This work assumed that two different patterns of linkage connection exist, but the analysis can be extended to more than two connection patterns of linkages.

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