A MULTISCALE MEASURE OF PARTICLE ABRASIVITY

In the work presented a new technique of characterising particle abras ivity based on the representation of the particle boundary by triangle s at different scales has been developed. Initially, a number of artif icial particle boundaries were constructed and analysed showing good c orrelation with their 'intuitive' abrasiveness. Later the abrasivity o f four types of typical mineral abrasives was characterised and correl ated with two body abrasive wear rates. The abrasivity of both artific ial and real particles was characterised by the boundary fractal dimen sion (via the Richardson's plot), aspect ratio, reciprocated shape fac tor and by the newly developed 'spike parameter'. It was found that th e reciprocated shape factor and the newly developed spike parameter co rrelated well with two body wear rates. It was also found that the wea r rates obtained in both two and three body tests could be closely rel ated if the three body wear rates were normalised with respect to abra sive particle density.