Simple Estimation of the Surface Area of Irregular 3D Particles
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 28, Issue 8
Abstract
Shape-related properties of irregular particles are of interest in many fields. The volume and dimensions of rocks, such as coarse and larger fine concrete aggregates, can be physically measured rather easily. However, the surface area is difficult to measure physically, if at all possible. A combination of computed tomography and spherical harmonic analysis can be used to calculate the surface areas of micrometer-sized to centimeter-sized particles. This paper compares the success of several approaches that use easy-to-measure properties, specifically the orthogonal length, width, and thickness of a particle and its volume to estimate its surface area. A training set of 3,359 particles varying widely in size and shape is used to develop regression equations between various shape parameters. These equations are then used to estimate surface areas of cement and aggregate particles in three different validation sets. Improvements are offered to some existing surface area estimation methods. Finally, a novel method is proposed that estimates surface area with a mean absolute percentage error of 2.8 to 3.8% and with individual particle error.
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Acknowledgments
Part of the μCT data presented here was collected at beamline X2B, at the National Synchrotron Light Source, Brookhaven National Laboratory. Edward Garboczi of the National Institute of Standards and Technology developed the codes for SH analysis. His support and guidance is greatly appreciated.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 28 • Issue 8 • August 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 28, 2015
Accepted: Dec 18, 2015
Published online: Mar 17, 2016
Published in print: Aug 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Aug 17, 2016
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