Estimation of Los Angeles abrasion resistance of igneous rocks from mechanical aggregate properties

Aggregates are one of the most common materials used in engineering projects, and they are exposed to a variety of physical and chemical influences depending on the areas in which they are used. An aggregate should generally be hard, durable, uniform and clean, as well as highly abrasion-resistant. It must not contain harmful substances that can cause alkali-silica reactions. One of the most important properties for determining the quality of an aggregates is its abrasion resistance; the best known and most widely applied test used to measure abrasion resistance is the Los Angeles abrasion test (LA). Although the relationship between rock properties and LA has been investigated by some researchers, the relations between other aggregate strength properties and LA has not been clearly defined. In this study, thirty-nine igneous rock aggregates were tested to measure the quality of the aggregates and to determine the relationships between the LA values and the mechanical-physical properties of the aggregates. The LA values of the tested aggregates ranged from 16.13 to 58.9%. Both simple and multiple regression analysis techniques were used to evaluate in detail the test results obtained from the experiments. The LA value was estimated with the help of some aggregate tests (rock impact hardness-RIHN, coefficient of rock strength-CRS and aggregate crushing value-ACV, etc.) which can be done by using small amounts of the aggregates and relatively simple test tools. The aim of this study is to estimate in a practical way, the abrasion resistance of the aggregates with the help of these correlations, which were obtained by using relatively simple tests. The regression analyses (simple and multiple) indicated strong correlations between LA and mechanical tests of aggregate.