THEORETICAL PREDICTION AND EXPERIMENTAL-DETERMINATION OF ATTRITION RATES

When reasonably soluble substances (c > 0.1 mol l(-1)) are crystalliz ed at a high specific power input and within their metastable zone, at trition is a primary source of nucleation. The study presented here is an attempt to quantify this attrition mechanism. Firstly, a physical model is introduced which relates the attrition resistance of a crysta lline substance to its mechanical properties. In the second part, the emphasis is placed on the determination of the relevant mechanical pro perties, hardness, elastic constants, and fracture resistance. The phy sical model will finally be compared to experimental results. A good a greement is found between the experimentally determined and theoretica lly predicted attrition behaviour.