Introducing the concept of mechanical texture in comminution: The case of concrete recycling

• New concept of mechanical texture embodies textural properties that control ore fracture.
• Mass specific fracture energy is a sensitive macroscopic ore texture index.
• Fracture porosity defines mechanical texture for concrete.
• Illustration of a direct link between mechanical texture and processing performance for concrete.

Modern comminution research and development are mainly product driven rather than material driven. An opinion that is gaining acceptance throughout the comminution community is that it is desirable for the comminution field to evolve toward material driven process design. To this end, this paper introduces the concept of mechanical texture, which corresponds to those textural properties of materials that have a direct bearing on their mechanical and fracture properties, which in turn should be the primary target for comminution process research and equipment design. The paper shows that mass specific fracture energy Ecs is a fracture parameter that is highly sensitive to variations in material texture, leading to selecting Ecs as a sound mechanical texture index. The paper then shows that, in the case of concrete, a set of specific features of the fracture porosity that can be measured inside concrete texture correlate highly with Ecs, thereby defining mechanical texture for concrete comminution. The demonstration that it is possible to establish a direct link between textural properties of concrete and macroscopic properties relevant to comminution shows that material driven comminution process modeling and design are possible and should be encouraged.