Parametric dependence of particle breakage mechanisms

It has been observed that the pattern of particle impact breakage in two-dimensional systems is a result of two mechanisms. “Mechanism I” accounts for the breakage induced by the stresses that appear in unbroken particles. “Mechanism 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 govern the magnitude of the breakage induced by the various mechanisms—in particular, to understand the specific effects of impact velocity on the size distribution. To that end, a dimensionless parameter that governs the magnitude of the breakage induced by Mechanism I in both two and three dimensions is developed. The two-dimensional analysis demonstrates a velocity dependence for the Mechanism I breakage that accounts for the observed velocity effect on the generated size distributions. However, the three-dimensional analysis demonstrates no such velocity effect. Both findings are supported by simulation results.