THE CSIRO HOPKINSON BAR FACILITY FOR LARGE-DIAMETER PARTICLE BREAKAGE

The new CSIRO Hopkinson Bar Facility has been commissioned at the Quee nsland Centre for Advanced Technologies in Brisbane, Australia. Simila r devices, such as the Ultra Fast Load Cell (UFLC) at the Utah Comminu tion Centre have proven to be extremely useful in providing fundamenta l breakage data of particulate material. In addition to its 19 mm and 60 mm diameter Hopkinson bars, the new CSIRO facility includes a large 100 mm Hopkinson Bar. This large diameter carbon steel load cell is i nstrumented with highly sensitive semi-conductor strain gauges that gi ve it a force resolution of less than 100 Newtons, permitting precise measurement of the energy to fracture large mineral particles. The dev ice's ability to measure breakage properties, such as first fracture f orce and energy, of large particles up 100 mm is unique. Breakage data for iron ores over a wide size range is presented. The well known com minution result of increasing particle strength and fracture energy wi th decreasing panicle size was confirmed for the iron ores tested. The influence of iron ore mineralogy and texture was also noted. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.