Particle breakage model published in Construction and Building Materials

A unified fractional breakage model for granular materials inspired by the crushing tests of dyed gypsum particles

Developed during Jidu’s master’s studies at Hohai University, this paper is the first SCI paper on which Jidu served as corresponding author.

Particle breakage plays a key role in the behavior of granular materials in engineering practice. Using dyed gypsum particles, a technique that makes it possible to track how each size fraction of particles breaks, we carried out one-dimensional compression tests on granular assemblies with different gradations.

The tests revealed that the fractional particle breakage follows a unique evolution path, regardless of the initial gradation. Based on this finding, we established a unified and simple fractional breakage model that captures the evolution of the particle size distribution of each size fraction, and performs well in predicting the gradation evolution of initially polydisperse granular materials.

Many thanks to Dr. Chaomin Shen, Prof. Sihong Liu and Hangyu Mao for this fruitful collaboration.