Curvature flows, scaling laws and the geometry of attrition under impacts

Impact induced attrition processes are, beyond being essential models of industrial ore processing, broadly regarded as the key to decipher the provenance of sedimentary particles. Here we establish the first link between microscopic, particle-based models and the mean field theory for these processes. Based on realistic computer simulations of particle-wall collision sequences we first identify the well-known damage and fragmentation energy phases, then we show that the former is split into the abrasion phase with infinite sample lifetime (analogous to Sternberg’s Law) at finite asymptotic mass and the cleavage phase with finite sample lifetime, decreasing as a power law of the impact velocity (analogous to Basquin’s Law). This splitting establishes the link between mean field models (curvature-driven partial differential equations) and particle-based models: only in the abrasion phase does shape evolution emerging in the latter reproduce with startling accuracy the spatio-temporal patterns (two geometric phases) predicted by the former.