Abstract
Producers and consumers of fine granular materials and powders frequently need to assess the flowability and caking propensity of such materials for quality control and product development purposes. The Jenike shear cell is the best known tester for such assessment and the Schulze ring shear tester is also widely accepted. Other commercially available devices include the Johanson Hang-Up Indicizer. Each of these devices has limitations, chiefly due to the time taken to perform a test and the delicate apparatus required. There is still a need for a simple, relatively low cost, assessment method that provides highly reproducible measurements of flowability for quality control. Uniaxial testers have been developed at the University of Edinburgh, primarily for coal, to address this need, and many of the concepts of the coal tester have now been incorporated into a miniature tester for powders. This paper describes the design of the new tester and compares its results with the Johanson Indicizer and the Schulze ring shear tester. Issues studied include the reproducibility of each test, the determination of the unconfined yield strength and ease of use.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the International Congress on Particle technology |
| Subtitle of host publication | PARTEC 2007 |
| Publication status | Published - 2007 |