Zwick helps optimise diamond-mining process
A
Zwick Roell product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Sep 5, 2008
Diamond producer De Beers is using a Zwick compression testing machine to analyse how diamonds break during mining.
While diamond is the hardest naturally occurring material, it is very brittle.
This is a problem during mining, as comminution, separation and transport processes can all damage the product.
When using software packages to simulate diamond breakage during mining processes, an important characteristic is the breakage function.
This distribution gives a measure of how easily a diamond is damaged and has, until now, not been fully quantified.
Using a Zwick compression testing machine, researchers at South African company DebTech, a research and development arm of De Beers, have been able to experimentally measure the breakage function of a diamond.
'The Zwick compression testing machine gives us a way of relating simulated breakage to actual diamond breakage,' said Dr Garry Morrison, senior research scientist at DebTech.
As well as crushing diamonds, the Zwick machine is also used to fracture ceramic cylinders, which are used by diamond mines to periodically assess the effectiveness of its mining processes.
These ceramic cylinders are put through the process and their fragments are collected and analysed at the other end.
'The Zwick machine is helping us to better understand the effects our processes have on our product,' said Morrison, who uses a Zwick Z030 allround-line table-top machine for his experiments.
This is equipped with a 30kN load cell and features Zwick's testxpert software.
Software assistants help the customer to set up or change test procedures and it is compatible with all commercially available PCs and laptops without the need for an additional connection card.
It adopts industry-specific terminology and can easily export data to a company's central laboratory database.
The software also enables frame synchronisation of video recordings and features a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS).
This database can be used to administer test results spanning a number of test series.
Its graphical sequence editor enables the customer to design customised test procedures by combining test events, parameters and results.
It analyses the test procedure and can filter out errors in the early stages without destroying a single specimen.
The tests are run at 5mm/min load rate and each sequence is filmed with a high-speed video camera.
Loads can vary from tens to thousands of newtons and each diamond behaves differently depending on its shape, its flaws and inclusions.
Some break into two or three larger fragments and others fracture into vast numbers of tiny fragments.
'We can typically test 30 diamonds a day using the Zwick,' said Morrison.
'The time-consuming part is the characterisation of the size and shape of all the fragments after each test.' An analysis of the size and shape distributions of the broken fragments gives the breakage function.
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