Interaction-Based Model to Predict Tensile Strength of Compacted Mixtures from Individual Component Data

The tensile strength of powder mixtures is a function of the strength of particle–particle contacts broken as the compact fails. Previous attempts to model compact strength based on interparticulate contacts have assumed pairwise interactions (1-to-1 interactions) between adjacent particles. This assumption, which originates from gaseous systems, may not adequately describe the behavior of consolidated systems, in which multiple adjacent particles interact simultaneously. In this study, interparticle contacts were modeled using higher-order interactions to predict the tensile strength of the compacted powder mixtures. Pairwise interactions are either completely cohesive or completely adhesive. The present model defines interactions in terms of multiple particles, leading to a distribution of distinct adhesive interactions whose strength is reflected by the composition of the interacting particle cluster. We have found that fourth-order interactions seem to produce the most accurate predictions, which is consistent with observations of interparticle interactions in consolidated systems. This model was evaluated using compacted mixtures containing diverse materials and compared to previously reported mixture prediction models. This new model produced superior predictions in all cases, with deviations between predicted and measured strength of ≤0.22 MPa on average.