Laboratory rock fragmentation tests provide the basic information for machine design and rock cutting mechanism with reflecting the fundamental tool-rock interaction and edge-chipping testing method is a relatively novel and cost-effective method on study of the mechanical hard rock fragmentation. However, the probability distribution of test parameters and minimum replication number for a rock fragmentation test have not been proposed so far.
This paper involves a statistical treatment on edge-chipping test parameters including the chipping force, the indentation depth and morphological properties of chips. With this respect, one hundred individual edge chipping tests were carried out on a homogenous tuff sample for the selected testing condition. Accordingly, basic statistical properties (mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation) of test results have been investigated. Besides, the probability distributions of the test parameters have been analysed along with normality tests. According to this statistical treatment, it was seen that, while the chipping force, the chip length and the chip angle showed normal distributions, the indentation depth and the chip width showed lognormal distributions. Additionally, statistical variability of the chipping force was used to propose the minimum test replication number for the edge-chipping test. As a result, it has been concluded at least 4-6 tests should be conducted for mechanical rock fragmentation tests for a homogenous rock.
