Priscilla J. Hill

Simulation of Spherical Particle Breakage

Abstract Many papers on particle breakage provide qualitative descriptions of changes in particle shape, but do not provide quantitative analysis of changes in the particle shape. The papers that provide quantitative analysis often focus on the case where corners are chipped off of a cubic crystal. However, there are many other cases that are encountered in industry. The goal of this work is to develop breakage functions that account for the sizes and aspect ratios of resulting child particles as spheres are fragmented. The focus in these studies is breakage by single impact and is based on experimental results. The equations developed allow the user to adjust the number of coarse particles formed by fragmentation. This is necessary because the force of impact and the material properties determine the number of coarse particles formed. Therefore, this allows the user to adjust the parameters for the system being studied.