Elongation, flatness and compactness indices to characterise particle form

A century after the first attempts of Wentworth to characterise the shape of cobbles, our understanding of particle morphology is still expanding. A plethora of shape indices has been proposed in the literature to characterise the morphology of individual particles. This study aims to shed light on the merits and limitations of the indices currently used to characterise particle elongation, flatness and compactness, adopting a unified classification framework. Second, new indices are proposed to address the identified shortcomings. Third, a new particle classification system derived from the proposed indices is illustrated. It is shown the new system overcomes the misclassification of a range of particles that are incorrectly classified as bladed in the Zingg system.(c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study aims to clarify the advantages and limitations of the shape indices currently used to characterize particle morphology through a unified classification framework. It also proposes new indices and a particle classification system to address the misclassification issues in the existing system.