Evaluation of the Structure and Geometric Properties of Crushed Igneous Rock Aggregates
Paweł Strzałkowski,
Magdalena Duchnowska,
Urszula Kaźmierczak,
Alicja Bakalarz,
Michał Wolny,
Piotr Karwowski,
Tomasz Stępień
Affiliations
Paweł Strzałkowski
Department of Mining, Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Magdalena Duchnowska
Department of Mining, Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Urszula Kaźmierczak
Department of Mining, Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Alicja Bakalarz
Department of Mining, Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Michał Wolny
Department of Mining, Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Piotr Karwowski
Department of Mining, Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Tomasz Stępień
Department of Mining, Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
The aim of this publication is to analyze the influence of rock mineral composition and rock geometric properties on the quality of crushed aggregates, from the perspective of selecting an adequate aggregate production technology. This research is based on samples of crushed aggregates from plants processing igneous rocks from four different igneous deposits. In the case of the geometric properties, shape and flakiness indexes were identified and subsequently analyzed along with particle size distribution. The performed tests allowed a conclusion that the shape of the particle is influenced by the mineral composition and size distribution. The grain size analysis demonstrated that flaky and non-cubical particles concentrate in the finest grain fractions, and the least variable shape index is observed for basalt aggregate. Some problems were also observed to exist in relation to the classification of grain shape. In the literature, the notions of regular and irregular grains seem to be used interchangeably with the notions of flaky and non-flaky grains. The performed tests show that flaky grains do not necessarily have to be non-cubical and vice versa. Therefore, this article proposes an approach in which the applied technique is precisely explained and the shape of grains is described with four notions: cubical, non-cubical, flaky, and non-flaky. The article also finally concludes that the next step in the research on selecting an optimal production technology of high-quality aggregates should be to analyze the selection of the fragmentation process while also characterizing the geometric properties of the aggregates.
