Review and Further Validation of a Practical Single-Particle Breakage Model

Abstract

Particle breakage occurs in comminution machines and, inadvertently, in other process equipment during handling as well as in geotechnical applications. For nearly a century, researchers have developed mathematical expressions to describe single-particle breakage having different levels of complexity and abilities to represent it. The work presents and analyses critically a breakage model that has been found to be suitable to describe breakage of brittle materials in association to the discrete element method, either embedded in it as part of particle replacement schemes or coupled to it in microscale population balance models. The energy-based model accounts for variability and size-dependency of fracture energy of particles, weakening when particles are stressed below this value, as well as energy and size-dependent fragment size distributions when particles are stressed beyond it, discriminating between surface and body breakage. The work then further validates the model on the basis of extensive data from impact load cell and drop weight tests. Finally, a discussion of challenges associated to fitting its parameters and on applications is presented.