Discussion of “Particle breakage in granular materials — a conceptual framework”

Abstract

The authors have presented a good paper (Konrad and Salami 2018; hereafter referred to as the paper under discussion) dealing with a particle breakage model. Two of the model parameters are the slope of the breakage development segment in the model and the reference slope of the grain-size distribution (GSD) curve in log-log space, ␣ and v ref , respectively. The authors suggest that these parameters can be computed as function of t , the tensile strength of a particle of size d 50 (see Figs. 8a and 8b in the paper under discussion; note that all references to Fig. 8 herein refer to this figure in the paper under discussion). The authors verified their model with some experimental data and found a good agreement between the actual and predicted values. We believe that the model can be enhanced and be more reliable if some factors are also taken in consideration, namely the shape of the GSD curve and the soil density.