MECHANICAL-BEHAVIOR OF BRITTLE CEMENT GRAINS

Before attempting a modelling approach to the crushing mechanisms of ' 'cement clinker'' it was necessary to characterize the mechanical beha viour of this material up to breakage. The diametrical compressive tes t was chosen, as it is the closest to the typical loading within a pac king of grains and a very convenient experimental approach for the ana lysis of mechanical behaviour law up to fragmentation of brittle granu lar material. The modellization of the grain as a hard brittle core su rrounded by a thin crumbly skin leads us to associate the contact sett ing with the crumbly skin behaviour and the breakage with the brittle core behaviour. This analysis allowed us to define scaling laws for th e skin thickness and breakage load. The breakage force increases as a power raw of the grain diameter with an exponent of 1.5 and it is show n that the mean prefactor K-0 is an intrinsic characteristic parameter proportional to the tenacity of the material.