STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF MECHANICAL PROPERTIES AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF GARNET SANDS ON THEIR ABRASIVE AND CUTTING ABILITIES

Abstract

In this work the complex of physical and mechanical properties of garnet sand produced by the Australian company GMA Garnet PTY Ltd. and two prototypes of garnet concentrates produced by the Russian organization IMGRE with different mineral content was studied. The values of such characteristics as roughness, hardness, modulus of elasticity, strength, abrasive and cutting abilities, as well as bulk density were measured. A comparison of the obtained data was carried out in order to solve technical and economic issues related to the extraction of garnet sands and their use in specific types of material processing. Since abrasive and cutting ability are considered the main indicators of the quality of abrasive garnet sands, based on the obtained results, an analysis was made of the correlation of abrasive and cutting ability values with other measured properties. It is shown that, taking into account the presence of impurities, the average hardness of all three sand samples coincides within the error and is (17.2 ± 3.5) GPa, the elastic modulus was (274 ± 43) GPa. The roughness value for all three samples coincided within the error. At the same time, the obtained values of the hardness of individual garnet particles are comparable with the results of studies of garnet particles from various deposits or produced by other companies. It is shown that the main parameters of the studied, which are in direct correlation with the abrasive and cutting ability, are the strength and modulus of elasticity, as well as the percentage of garnet particles in the sand mixture. The content of impurity particles with lower hardness in the investigated sands nonlinearly underestimates the strength, abrasive and cutting abilities.