Particle angularity and its relationship to abrasive and erosive wear

Abrasive particles are present in many tribological systems. Although it is intuitively felt that the shape of abrasive particles is related to the wear damage they cause, so far there has been no parameter accurately describing the particle angularity. Such a parameter would be useful in wear models. Recently, new parameters relating the angularity of particles to their abrasivity have been developed. One parameter called ‘spike parameter-linear fit’ (SP) is based on the representation of the projected particle boundary by positive, i.e. convex, triangles at many scales while the other called ‘spike parameter-quadratic fit’ (SPQ) is based on curve fitting to major boundary features. Experiments conducted have shown that these parameters correlate well with the abrasive and erosive wear rates. In this paper, the relationship between the angularity of abrasive particles described by these parameters and abrasive and erosive wear is demonstrated.