A novel consolidation method to measure powder flow properties using a small amount of material

Bulk flow property characterization often requires large powder samples (tens to hundreds of grams). However, many applications have limited sample availability, due to cost, material availability, safety concerns, etc. Therefore, reducing the amount of required material is of interest. A novel compressibility method is introduced using less than 50 mg, for the materials studied here. The effect of particle size and cohesion due to capillary forces are determined using a small-scale compressibility cell mounted on a texture analyzer. It is found that the powder bed consolidation occurred in two regimes, described using the Walker and Heckel equations. The small-scale compressibility method was compared to known behavior at larger scales and validated against the FT4 compressibility test. It was found that bulk behavior could be observed using the small-scale compressibility method. Additional behavior caused by small-scale events, which are averaged out in large-scale measurements, are revealed in the small-scale device introduced here.