The effect of temperature on the mechanical characteristics of individual particles

Abstract

The current work investigates the effect of temperature on the mechanical characteristics such as breakage force, breakage energy, yield force and effective modulus of elasticity of individual particles. This is important for modeling particle attrition at different temperature conditions. The results were obtained by employing uniaxial compression tests at different temperatures between 210 and 465 K. Besides giving results and analysis, this paper provides in detail unique particle's heating and cooling chambers specially designed for this topic and allows keeping particle temperature constant through the entire experiment process. Seven various particulate materials tested during this study: dead-sea salt and potash, GNP, silica gel, zeolite 4A, alumina and novolen 1040n particles, with different fraction sizes ranging 0.71 ÷ 5 mm. The results showed that the strengths of salt and silica gel particles increase with the temperature. Therefore, more energy is required in order to break these particles at high temperatures. Effective modulus of elasticity for most of the materials reduced at high temperatures confirming the particles become softer. Consequently, empirical models were proposed describing the distribution of the breakage force, breakage energy, yield force and effective modulus of elasticity versus the particle size and temperature.