Real microstructure modeling for stiffness and strength analyses of texture in ores

Theoretical model is proposed to make stiffness and strength analyses for various multi-phase, porous media including the sintered ores. On the basis of the multilevel modeling, a macro-model is used to estimate the crushing strength of sintered ore with various compositions of texture. A micro model for each texture is constructed to represent its characteristic microstructure and to make stiffness and strength analyses. Since the real microstructure is taken into account of the unit cell, the homogenized stiffness provides us the elastic properties of textures with or without micro-pores, The stress analysis both for texture and crushing test-specimen, provides us the theoretical estimate of fracture strength, respectively. Three typical textures in the sintered ore are employed for application of the present theoretical models. The procedure to deduce the theoretical model from the optical micrograph is described for the texture of acicular calcium ferrite. Using the unit cell models for each texture, which is objective to the cell size and geometry, the stiffness and fracture strength are estimated. Assuming that the sintered ore specimen is composed of two phases or composite of porous hematite and slag-hematite complex, the fracture strength is also estimated as the function of volume fraction for porous hematite.