A New Brittleness Index for Compacted Tablets

This dimensionless index quantitatively denotes the brittle/ductile character of the compacted material as the normalized deformation in percentage of a cylindrical tablet at the breaking point. For ideal brittle materials, the BDI value will be 0 and for complete plastic deformation, that is, a total compression of the tablet without fracture, BDI will be 100. The validity and discriminative power is demonstrated on mixtures of microcrystalline cellulose and lactose. The robust measure of brittleness with an acceptable accuracy is obtained with only a minor influence of the tablet diameter and the speed of platen.