Parametric dependence of particle breakage mechanisms

It has been observed that the pattern of particle impact breakage in two-di mensional systems is a result of two mechanisms. "Mechanism I" accounts for the breakage induced by the stresses that appear in unbroken particles, "M echanism II" breakage is due to the buckling of the Mechanism I fragments. The purpose of this paper is to try and understand the parameters that gove rn the magnitude of the breakage induced by the various mechanisms-in parti cular, to understand the specific effects of impact velocity on the size di stribution. To that end, a dimensionless parameter that governs the magnitu de of the breakage induced by Mechanism I in both two and three dimensions is developed. The two-dimensional analysis demonstrates a velocity dependen ce for the Mechanism I breakage that accounts for the observed velocity eff ect on the generated size distributions. However, the three-dimensional ana lysis demonstrates no such velocity effect. Both findings are supported by simulation results. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.