Ball mill abrasion test (BMAT): Method development and statistical evaluations

High-stress abrasive wear is a major material consumption process in mining and ore beneficiation industries. The common laboratory high-stress abrasion apparatuses suffer from lack of capability of closely simulating the service conditions of grinding media and mill liners, being the main consumables in these sectors. The ball mill abrasion test (BMAT) is a versatile abrasive wear tester that facilitates reliable modelling of kinematics and contact mechanics of the industrial mills. Unlike ‘standard’ test devices, natural rocks of any type and/or blend with desired particles size distributions can be charged into the BMAT for testings under various ranges of liquids, grinding media and durations. It is simple to design, low-cost to manufacture, reliable to evaluate alloys performance and reproducible to rank abrasion-resistant materials. In this work, BMAT's two operation modes, BMAT-T (tumbling mode) and BMAT-C (cassette mode) are introduced. The performed comprehensive analysis on the method development, statistical assessment and further procedures refinement showed that: • In the BMAT-T, 20-hour tests using the planned operational parameters and normalisation method result in statistically reliable and reproducible outcomes. • In the BMAT-C, four 20-hr intervals, different operational parameters and specific specimen distribution pattern are needed to obtain high quality measurements. • The maximum observed relative standard deviation in the all statistical and alloy-performance evaluation campaigns was 6.6% — an excellent quality dimension for an abrasion test.