Quantification of the crushing of grains by the calculation of the surfaces

Abstract

The quantification of the grain’s crushing has often been neglected in the past, today it is a necessary asset in the selection of use of granular materials. The Kick and Rittinger theories on energy reduction in the size of a grain combined with the model proposed by Fukumoto who represents mathematically the particle size distributions, allowed us to calculate the area between the grain size distributions curves before and after tests. The aim of this work is to identify the amount of crushed grains on local materials (pegmatite, clayey schist and sandstone) in order to quantify the breaking of their grains. The evolution of the particle size distribution, particle breakage, of these materials was investigated through performing a three series of tests (oedometer, shear and Proctor tests). This grain size spreading obtained after the test, called the crushing surface, shows that the crushing evolves with not only the increase of load, presence of water and grain size, but also with the material (mineralogy) and the stress path.

Keywords:

• Grain of materials
• crushing grain
• crushing surface

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.