Wear mechanisms in ball-cratering tests with large abrasive particles

Three-body abrasive wear resistance of mild steel and 27%Cr white cast iron was investigated using a ball-cratering test. Glass beads, silica sand, quartz and alumina abrasive particles with sizes larger than 200 μm were used to make slurries. It was found that the wear rates of mild steel increased with sliding time for all abrasive particles tested, while the wear rates of 27%Cr white cast iron were almost constant with sliding time. This increase in the wear rates of mild steel was mainly due to the gradual increase in ball surface roughness with testing time. Abrasive particles with higher angularity caused higher ball surface roughness. Soft mild steel was more affected by this ball surface roughness changes than the hard white cast iron. Generally, three-body rolling wear dominated. The contribution of two-body grooving wear increased when the ball roughness was significant. The morphological features of the wear scars depended on the shape of the abrasive particles and also on the hardness and microstructure of the wear material. Angular particles generated rough surfaces similar to those usually observed in high angle erosion tests. Rounded particles generated smoother surfaces with the middle area of the wear craters having similar morphology to those observed in low angle erosion.     

Measuring characteristics of aggregate material from vertical shaft impact crushers

Natural gravel has traditionally been the main choice of material for Swedish concrete manufacturers. However, due to the fact that natural gravel also acts as a fresh water filter, the deposits are limited. The obvious question is how to compare machine made and natural gravel in terms of particle shape, rheology and other material characteristics. This paper will present some methods and results that demonstrate performance of different machine made rock materials. Particle shape characteristics were assessed from flow measurements in a standard cone. The vertical shaft impact crusher (VSI) produces gravel that is a good alternative to natural gravel. The quality of the material and the particle shape seem to meet concrete producers’ demands.     

Interface shear characteristics of jute/polypropylene hybrid nonwoven geotextiles and sand using large size direct shear test

In this study, large-size direct shear tests were conducted to determine the interfacial shear characteristics of sand–geotextile under three different normal stresses. The geotextiles used in the present study were hybrid needlepunched nonwovens containing defined weight proportions of jute and polypropylene fibers. Subsequently, the interfacial shear characteristics of hybrid and that of a nonwoven geotextile consisting of solely polypropylene fibers with sand were compared and analyzed under different normal stresses. Initial higher shear stiffness of sand-polypropylene geotextiles was observed corresponding to sand-hybrid geotextiles specifically under higher normal stresses. Nevertheless, the contact efficiency of sand-hybrid nonwovens was similar to that of sand-polypropylene geotextiles. The surface morphology of sand particles has been investigated based on the images obtained from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and quantitatively analyzed by means of Wadell roundness and degree of angularity methods.     

Effects of aggregate size and angularity on alkali-silica reaction

The effects of reactive aggregate size and aggregate angularity on alkali-silica reaction (ASR) were studied. An all-in natural reactive aggregate was used. The coarse aggregate particles were crushed to obtain crushed fine particles. The angularity of the aggregate was determined using ASTM C1252 and EN 933-6 methods. ASTM C1260 accelerated mortar bar test was conducted to compare the ASR expansion caused by various aggregate size fractions. The effect of the size of the particles on ASR expansion was studied by replacing each size fraction of the non-reactive aggregate with the reactive aggregate of the same size. In spite of similarity of the chemical and mineralogical compositions, the crushed aggregate caused higher ASR expansion than the natural aggregate in all size fractions. The summation of the expansions of individual reactive size fractions of both aggregates was found to be higher than that of corresponding control mixtures.     

Ball-cratering abrasion tests with large abrasive particles

The application of a ball-cratering method to test three-body abrasive wear of bulk materials in the presence of large abrasive particles has been investigated. Four types of abrasive particles of different sharpness were used to make slurries: glass beads, silica sand, crushed quartz and alumina. All the particles were sieved to a size of 250–300 μm. Two common industrial materials, mild steel and 27% Cr white cast iron, were used as wear samples. Wear rates of metallic samples were determined and the worn surfaces were examined by optical microscopy, SEM and Talysurf profilometry.It was found that the surface roughness of the ball significantly affects the wear rates and the wear mechanisms of the metallic samples. The surface roughness of the ball steadily increased with testing time and was mainly affected by the angularity of abrasive particles. More angular particles generated higher ball surface roughness. It was found that the gradual increase in the ball surface roughness was responsible for non-linearity of wear rates with sliding time. The increasing depth of the wear craters also contributed to this non-linearity as deeper craters facilitate particle entrainment. Three-body rolling wear dominated when the ball was smooth and the contribution of two-body grooving wear increased with increasing the ball roughness. Softer mild steel samples were more affected by the ball roughness changes than the harder white cast iron samples. Wear surface morphology was also affected by the angularity of particles and by the material properties of wear samples. Particle fracture was found in all four groups of abrasives and the angularity of the particles was slightly altered. Therefore, the ball-cratering test, under the testing conditions used, can be considered as a high-stress abrasion test.     

Image analysis of particles by modified Ferret method — best-fit rectangle

For the purpose of choosing and designing measurement algorithms to characterize particle size and shape rotation-invariantly, reproducibly, simply, and reasonably, this paper presents an image analysis measurement algorithm-best-fit rectangle for particle size and shape. The best-fit rectangle approach is a combination of the Ferret method and the least 2nd moments minimization, only requiring calculation of three moments about the center of gravity, and maximum and minimum co-ordinates in a co-ordinate system oriented in the direction of the axis of the least 2nd moments, and a simple area ratio. It is a simple rotation-invariance method, reflecting shape (elongation and angularity). In this paper, the method that has been tested in a large number of aggregate particle samples in a laboratory is introduced theoretically in detail, analyzed and compared to other widely used methods. The test results show that by using this method, the results are very close to manual measurements (for size, elongation and angularity). The width accumulative curve is parallel to the curves of sieving and thickness, implying that sieving analysis and thickness measurement can be easily estimated by the width. The method combining other image processing algorithms in an online system does the processing in real time. It is more reasonable and useful than other traditionally used measurement methods in image analysis.     

集料形态特征对集料-沥青黏附及水稳定性的影响

为评价集料形态特征对集料-沥青黏附性及其体系水稳定性的影响,提出了一种定量测试集料-沥青黏附性的新方法.借助集料图像测量系统(AIMS)测试了5种集料的形态特征,并对不同形态集料沥青混合料的水稳定性进行评价,建立了集料形态特征与集料-沥青黏附性及水稳定性的关系,同时基于灰色关联法分析了集料形态特征对集料-沥青黏附性及水稳定性的影响排序.结果 表明:提出的集料-沥青黏附性定量测试方法简单、可靠;沥青混合料水稳定性最佳的棱角性为2500～3000,球度为0.65～0.75;随着集料表面纹理的增大,沥青混合料的水稳定性增强;集料表面纹理对集料-沥青黏附性的影响最大,棱角性对沥青混合料浸水飞散损失指标的影响最大,球度对沥青混合料冻融劈裂强度比、浸水车辙变形拐点指标的影响最大.