Measurement of fracture energy during single-particle fracture

Abstract

The population balance model provides a very good description of the comminution of brittle particulate material. The breakage function plays a central role in the population balance method and its variation with impact energy is now considered to be important when scaling up data for operating ball mills. The rate of breakage has been known for many years to be impact-energy dependent. This paper describes the operation and calibration of a precise apparatus for the measurement of the distribution of fracture energies among particles and the relationship between the breakage function and the impact energy. The distribution of fracture energies was found to be log normal and varies consistently with particle size. The distribution of fracture energy for several different materials was determined. The one-to-one correspondence between the probability of breakage and the distribution of fracture energies is demonstrated.