Linking impact-related progeny sizes of cement clinker to modes of single-particle breakage

Department of Mining Engineering, Middle East Technical University, 06800 Ankara, Turkey

^a Corresponding author: mcamalan@metu.edu.tr

Abstract

Fragmentation of particulate solids is an important process in many industrial activities, particularly in the mineral, cement and glass industries to comminute the raw materials to a required size. Understanding of processes and mechanisms responsible for fragmentation of particulate solids is a hard task. This may bring great precision for designing and controlling the comminution process. This work aims to contribute to understanding fragmentation of cement clinker particles under impact loading. For this purpose, six narrow-size classes of Portland clinker were fragmented with varying specific impact energy levels in a drop weight test apparatus. Then, breakage probabilities and functions of these size classes were determined from the product size distributions. The calculated breakage functions show evidences for the modes of breakage (meridian cracks to oblique cracks and shattering) given in the literature. Results of this study indicate that self-similarity of progeny size distributions can only be achieved, regardless of particle size and impact energy, if the particles have the same breakage probability, that is the same mode of breakage.