ARTICLE IN PRESS

Biosystems Engineering (2004) 88 (3), 337–342 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

doi:10.1016/j.biosystemseng.2004.02.011
PH}Postharvest Technology

Wear of Rice in an Abrasive Milling Operation, Part 1:

Prediction of Degree of Milling
Debabandya Mohapatra; Satish Bal
Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721302, India;
e-mail of corresponding author: sbal@agfe.iitkgp.ernet.in

(Received 11 June 2003; received in revised form 28 February 2004; published online 7 June 2004)

The abrasion coefficient of rice was determined at different degrees of milling levels, for three varieties of rice
differing in slenderness ratio. The abrasion coefficient was found to decrease with the degree of milling,
indicating the removal of asperities and progressive hardness of the core of the rice. The slenderness ratio was
found to be negatively related with the value of the abrasion coefficient. The average values of the abrasion
coefficient of rice on abrasive element (synthetic emery) varied between 0
03 and 0
05 for three varieties of rice
differing in hardness and slenderness values. The average value of abrasion coefficient was used to predict
the degree of milling using the principles of adhesive wear. The predicted values of the degree of milling fitted
the experimental values adequately, with relative deviation modulus varying between 14 and 23% and good
values for the coefficient of determination (R2 > 0
90).
# 2004 Silsoe Research Institute. All rights reserved
Published by Elsevier Ltd

1. Introduction
Milling any material is basically a phenomenon of
wear (Sarkar, 1976). Wear is defined as either mass or
volume of material, removed or displaced from a solid
surface, which is repeatedly subjected to mechanical
stresses by rubbing with another solid surface or
surfaces. This involves removal of material from a solid
surface by mechanical action, which may be sliding,
rolling, impact or combination of these operations
(Robinowicz, 1965). The wear processes may be
classified into different modes depending on the kine-
matics and mechanisms (Zum Gahr, 1998). In abrasive
wear, material is displaced or detached from the solid
surface by the following: (i) hard particles or the
presence of hard protuberances on a counter face in a
relative motion as in the case of two-body abrasion; and
(ii) hard particles between two surfaces or embedded in
one of the two surfaces in relative motion, as occurs in
three-body abrasion. In practice, when a single asperity
slides against a softer counter face, the deformation
mode can be entirely elastic, provided the asperity is
sufficiently obtuse; in such a case the wear rate will be
negligible (Xie & Williams, 1996). In polymers, strong
adhesion occurs at the points of contact of the asperities;
when sliding occurs, fragments are torn from the softer
surface and are left deposited on the harder one
(Meredith & Hearle, 1959). According to the literature
(Zum Gahr, 1998), the rate of material removal from a
solid body is 10% of the total time and 90% of the time
it spent rolling. However, wear has no satisfactory
quantitative laws. This is because any small change in
one of the parameters, for example, speed, area of
contact, load, amplitude, dimension of the abrasive as
well as the abrading material, can completely alter the
contribution of each factor to any overall wear equation
(Bowden & Tabor, 1964).
Rice milling operations, in particular, are of two
types: (i) abrasion milling, in which brown rice is
abraded by a hard abrasive surface at high speed
and low pressure between two surfaces; and (ii) friction
milling, in which two or three body wear take place
due to the rubbing of two bodies of similar nature,
under high pressure and at relatively low speeds.
However, there is no pure form of abrasive or friction
milling in rice polishing. It is a combination of
adhesive and abrasive wear. When the rice grains
revolve inside the milling chamber, the parts of rice
grain coming in contact with an emery surface undergo
an abrasion type of wear, whereas when the grains

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Published by Elsevier Ltd
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
338 D. MOHAPATRA; S. BAL
Notation
Ap total area of conical surface, m2
d0 depth of penetration of the conical emery
particle in the rice grain, m
D diameter of the emery wheel, m
DM degree of milling, %
Dobs observed degree of milling, %
Dpre predicted degree of milling, %
k wear coefficient
l length of rice grain, m
L normal load, N
mb bran mass, kg
Mg bulk mass of grain, kg
n number of data points
N rotational speed, min1
p hardness of the grain, N m2
rub with each other, an adhesive type of wear takes
place.
The specific objectives of this investigation are: (i) to
determine the coefficient of abrasion in rice grain
varying in the degree of milling using laws of wear and
(ii) to predict the degree of milling based on the
coefficient of abrasion.
2. Theoretical considerations
When a rice grain rubs against an abrasive surface, i.e.
emery surface, there will be formation of wear particles
at the junction of the point of contact between the
asperities. This would result in mass loss from the grain
surface. The volume V of the material removed in m3 or
the mass loss mb in kg in the process of abrasion is
dependent on the dimensions (slenderness ratio of the
grain l=w, where l and w are the length and width of the
grain in m, respectively) and hardness of the grain p in
N m2, length of cut or sliding distance x in m, and
normal load L in N.
2.1. Abrasion coefficient
For developing a mathematical model to estimate the
amount of bran (polish), the quantitative laws governing
both adhesive and abrasive wear types were considered.
The general laws of wear are as follows (Robinowicz,
1965):
(i) The amount of wear is generally proportional to the
load and sliding distance.
(ii) The amount of wear is inversely proportional to the
hardness of surface to be worn.
pw milling pressure, Pa
P relative deviation modulus, %
r radius of the emery cone, m
R2 coefficient of determination
t milling time, s
V volume of the material removed due to
abrasion, m3
w width of rice grain, m
x sliding distance, m
y angularity of the emery grain, deg
w2 chi-square
rb bulk density of bran, kg m3
DL small load acting on the grain surface, N
Based on these laws, Holm (1946) (as cited by
Robinowicz, 1965) developed an equation for the
evaluation of the volume of wear material removed as
in adhesive wear (Ravikiran & Jahanmir, 2001; Ling
et al., 2002):
kLx
V¼ ð1Þ
p
where k is the wear coefficient.
Archard (1953) postulated the adhesive wear law and
presented the wear coefficient for the area of contact
between the asperities. Another model of abrasive wear
(Appendix A) suggested that the coefficient of abrasion
may be calculated on the basis of the angularity y of the
emery particles. However, the variation in angularity
may be so much that it would be difficult to get a
representative value of tan y. Moreover, it was not
possible to measure values of angularity for the emery
particles in bonded condition or on an emery wheel.
Mulhearn and Samuels (1962) tried to determine the
number of effective emery particles in a bonded silicon
carbide surface. They found out that only 1/8 of
the total number of grains on a particular wheel was
in the cutting position. Assuming that all the effective
emery grains are cutting the bran on rice grain,
throughout the rotation of the polishing emery wheel,
of diameter D in m and rotational speed N in min1, the
bran removed by them operating through a sliding
distance given by (pDNt/60) for an operating duration
of t in s would be:
L
mb ¼ krb x ð2Þ
p
where rb is the bulk density of the bran in kg m3.
Properties of the materials are given in Table 1.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
WEAR OF RICE IN AN ABRASIVE MILLING OPERATION 339

Table 1
Properties of rice used in the mathematical model
Pusa Basmati Swarna ADT37
2
Hardness p, N m 0
015 0
011 0
018
Load L, N 1
96
Bulk density of bran rb , kg m3 420
Rotational speed N, min1 1360
Diameter of the emery wheel D, m 0
155

Now Eqn (2) can be written as
mb p
k¼ ð3Þ
rb Lx
Using Eqns (2) and (3), the degree of milling DM ,
which is defined as the mass of bran removed per unit
mass of brown rice and expressed in percentage, can be
expressed as
kr L
DM ¼ b x  100 ð4Þ
pMg
where Mg is the mass of brown rice fed to the polisher in
kg. Experimental results are validated using Holm–
Archard’s equation of wear.
3. Materials and methods
Freshly harvested Pusa Basmati, an aromatic, long
and slender variety (procured from Sonepat, Haryana,
India), Swarna, a medium grain variety (procured from
local market), and ADT37, a short and round grain
variety (procured from Tamilnadu, India), were selected
for this study. The varieties were dehusked using a
Satake rice dehusker (Type THU, Satake Engineering
Co., Tokyo, Japan) and stored in double-sealed poly-
thene bags at 58C in a refrigerator (Quick freezer, 200 l
capacity, Remi Equipments, India) until the experimen-
tation. Samples were removed from the refrigerator 24 h
before the experiments to equilibrate temperature to
room conditions. Moisture content was determined
using standard air oven method by keeping 5 g of grain
in an oven at 1088C for 24 h and then noting the weight.
The moisture content was expressed in percent wet basis.
Three principal diameters, viz length, width and thick-
ness of brown rice of each variety were measured
manually by Satake Grain Shape Tester (Model-MK
100, Japan) having 0
001 mm precision. Measurement
was made on 50 well-distributed, randomly drawn
grains from the test samples of each variety. Each grain
was manually adjusted between the spring-loaded
measuring head of the tester to determine the three
axial diameters of the kernel. The bulk density of bran
was determined by weighing 1 l of bran in the USDA
test weight apparatus, as specified by the equipment
manufacturers (Ohaus, USA, precision 0
1 kg h l1)
in triplicate. The average value was then expressed
in kg m3. Hardness of the samples was measured
using a texture analyser (TA-XT2, Texture Technologies
Corp., UK) with a 25 kg load cell using single
compression (Perez et al., 1997). The brown rice samples
i.e. long-slender Pusa Basmati (l=w ¼ 4
43), medium–
grain Swarna (l=w ¼ 2
55) and short-bold ADT37
(l=w ¼ 1
9), after cleaning and grading were polished
in abrasive polisher (Model: Satake Pearler- TM05) for
15–180 s. The emery grit size chosen was 36 and at a
rotor speed of 1360 min1. The samples were aspirated
(Bates Aspirator, USA) and mass loss was noted for
three varieties to calculate the degree of milling.
The data were analysed using ORIGIN 6
0 software
to determine the coefficient of determination R2 and
standard error, and the w2 test was applied to find the
goodness of fit (Panse & Sukhatme, 1967). Model
suitability was measured by the percent relative devia-
tion modulus P using the following formula (Madamba
et al., 1996):
100 Xn
jDpre  Dobs j
P¼ ð5Þ
n 0 Dobs
where: Dpre is the predicted degree of milling of the
grain; Dobs is the observed value of the degree of milling
of the grain; and n is the number of data points.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Determination of abrasion coefficient and prediction
of degree of milling
It was found out that the value of k for the rice
varieties varied from 0
05 to 0
022, 0
07 to 0
04 and
0
051 to 0
024, average values being 0
03, 0
05 and 0
03,
for Swarna, ADT37 and Pusa Basmati, respectively. The
decrease in the values for k as the value for DM
increased indicated that with progressive milling (Fig. 1),
as starchy endosperm was exposed, less of bran was
removed, suggesting the existence of harder core in the
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
340 D. MOHAPATRA; S. BAL

0.07 25

0.06
Abrasion coefficient k

20

Degree of milling, %
0.05
0.04 15

0.03
10
0.02
0.01 5

0.00
0 5 10 15 20 0
0 50 100 150 200
Degree of milling, % Milling time, s
Fig. 1. Variation in abrasion coefficient in relation to degree of Fig. 2. Predicted (line and symbol) and observed (symbols)
milling for three rice varieties: -*-, Pusa Basmati; -}-, Swarna; values of degree of milling for different varieties of rice: -*-,
-n-, ADT37 Pusa Basmati; -}-, Swarna; -n-, ADT37

rice caryopsis. This observation agrees well with the 25

earlier studies by Nagato and Kono (1963) (cited by
Juliano & Bechtel, 1985), where they had indicated a
tough interior for the indica variety. Hence, according to 20
Observed degree of milling, %

these findings, the power consumption to remove bran

during initial whitening process would be less when
compared to successive whitening processes. It appeared
that the bran, consisting of lignin, hemicelluloses,
cellulose, and oil bodies form weak bonds and were
removed easily. The abrasion coefficient values were
found to be highest in the case of ADT37. Being the
coarse, round variety, it lost more bran material during
milling. Moreover, the rise in temperature during the
milling operation may have affected the abrasion
coefficient value as temperature alters the starch
property. A higher value of the abrasion coefficient
implied that the material was comparatively harder, thus
more power was required to remove bran from the
caryopsis surface. It was revealed that although ADT37
had the highest value of hardness, the abrasion
coefficient was also affected by the volume of bran
removed for an effective length of travel. The volume
removed per effective length was not only affected by
hardness but also by the shape and constituents of the
materials as discussed earlier. The harder grains tend to
lose less material. In the case of ADT37, the hardness
was imparted to it by its thickness but due to its round
shape and surface resistance it lost more material,
influencing the value of abrasion coefficient. Brown rice
has an undulating surface and the asperities of the emery
surface when in contact with the ridges and furrows of
the grain surface tend to scour away the softer materials,
till the grain surface becomes smoother. This results in
reduction in mass loss, resulting in a decrease in the
values for the abrasion coefficient.
15
10
5
0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Predicted degree of milling, %
Fig. 3. Comparison of observed and predicted values of degree
of milling by Holm–Archard’s wear model: * Pusa Basmati; }
Swarna; n ADT37
The model developed to predict DM was validated
using the average value of abrasion coefficient k for the
three varieties of rice. The predicted values are
compared with the observed data in Fig. 2. The model
was found to be a moderate fit to the experimental
results, with values for the relative deviation modulus P
of 14–23%. These high errors seem to arise from the
initial and final deviation of predicted result from the
observed data. There was a high rate of bran removal
during initial phase of milling and lower bran removal at
the later stage attributing to kernel hardness. The
abrasion coefficient as already mentioned is a function
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
WEAR OF RICE IN AN ABRASIVE MILLING OPERATION
of hardness; hence there was variation in the value
of the abrasion coefficient with milling degree. On
considering the average value of the abrasion coeffi-
cient, initial results were underestimated, whereas they
were overestimated during the final stage. Fig. 3
presents the comparison between predicted and actual
values of the degree of milling. The linear nature of
the curve, at 458 slope from the origin indicates that,
the predicted model is a good fit for the actual/observed
degree of milling values with values for R2 of more
than 0
90, and with standard error values varying
between 0
5–4
01, 0
23–1
63 and 0
06–2
3 for Swarna,
Pusa Basmati and ADT37, respectively, at 95% con-
fidence level. The calculated values of w2 lie between 0.8
and 0.99 for the three varieties under consideration,
indicating a quite satisfactory goodness of fit of the
predicted model with the experimental results (Panse &
Sukhatme, 1967).
5. Conclusions
Holm–Archard’s equation was used to predict the
value of coefficient of abrasion when the rice grains were
abraded in a randomly hard abrasive surface. This
provided the information how the wear occurs at
different stages of rice milling and also quantified it.
The abrasion coefficient decreased as milling progressed,
indicating a tougher core of the rice caryopsis compared
to the outer bran layer for the indica varieties. It
appeared that bran layer comprising of oil bodies,
cellulose, hemicelluloses and fibre offers less resistance
to abrasion compared to the inner starchy endosperm.
Prediction of the degree of milling using the average
value of abrasion coefficient moderately fitted the
experimental results. The model indicated that wear
rate and coefficient of abrasion invariably depend on the
material hardness and its shape.
References
Archard J F (1953). Contact and rubbing of flat surfaces.
Journal of Applied Physics, 24(8), 981–988
Bowden F P; Tabor D (1964). Friction and Lubrication of
Solids Part II. Oxford Clarendon Press, London
Juliano B O; Bechtel D B (1985). The rice grain and its gross
composition in Rice: Chemistry and Technology, (Juliano B
O, ed) (2nd Ed.), pp 17–57. American Association of Cereal
Chemists, St. Paul, MN, USA
Ling F F; Bryant M D; Doelling K L (2002). On irreversible
thermodynamics for wear prediction. Wear, 253, 1165–1172
Madamba P S; Driscoll R H; Buckle K A (1996). Thin-layer
drying characteristics of garlic slices. Journal of Food
Engineering, 29, 75–97
341
Meredith R; Hearle J W S (1959). Physical Methods of
Investigating Textiles. Interscience Publishers, New York
Mulhearn T O; Samuels L E (1962). The abrasion of metal-a
model of the process. Wear, 5, 478–498
Panse V G; Sukhatme P V (1967). Statistical Methods for
Agricultural Workers. ICAR, India
Ravikiran A; Jahanmir S (2001). Effect of contact pressure and
load on wear of alumina. Wear, 251, 980–984
Robinowicz E (1965). Friction and Wear of Materials. Wiley,
New York
Sarkar A D (1976). Wear of Metals. Pergamon Press, Oxford
Xie Y; Williams J A (1996). The prediction of friction and wear
when a soft surface slides against a harder rough surface.
Wear, 196, 21–34
Zum Gahr K H (1998). Wear by hard particles. Tribology
International, 31(10), 587–596
Appendix A
To derive a quantitative expression for the mass of the
abrasive wear taking place during the milling operation of
rice, a simple model consisting of a conical asperity of
emery carrying a load DL may be considered to be penetrating
the soft surface of rice and then ploughing a groove in it
and removing the bran along the length of the rice as
shown in Fig. 4. If L is the maximum permissible load
and pw is the intensity of working pressure in the milling
chamber:
DL
r2 ¼ ðA1Þ
ppw
The projected area of the penetrated portion of the
cone in the vertical plane is rd 0 if the depth of pene-
tration is d 0 (Fig. 5). Thus, if the cone, of angle y, moves
through a distance dx, which is equal to a length of one
rice grain, it would sweep out a volume of dv of the bran in
one pass:
dv ¼ rd 0 dx ðA2Þ
and where d 0 ¼ r tan y ðA3Þ
dv ¼ r2 tan y dx ðA4Þ
∆L (load carried by emery
particle)
Hard surface (emery particle)
Ap
θ θ
Soft material surface (rice grain)
r
Radius of the
emery cone
Fig. 4. Schematic illustration of a abrasive cone pressed into a
soft grain surface: r, radius of the emery particle; DL normal
load or pressure intensity working on the harder material; Ap ,
projected area of the harder indentation; y, angularity of the
emery particle
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
342 D. MOHAPATRA; S. BAL

Emery grain at position 2

Direction of emery particle
2r
Emery grain at position 1
d′
2 1

Rice grain
dx

Fig. 5. Abrasive wear model of rice grain: dx, small sliding distance (length of single rice grain); d0 , depth of penetration of the
emery cone on the rice grain; r, radius of the emery cone in contact with the rice grain at positions 1 and 2

Substituting the value of r2 from Eqn (A1) in Eqn (A4) On integration the equation becomes
L tan y
dv ¼ dx ðA5Þ L tan y
pp V¼ x ðA7Þ
pp
If the contribution made by all the emery grains passing one
after the other is taken into consideration the total volume of
bran swept in one pass, where tan y is the weighted average of the tan y values of all
the individual cones.
L tan y Eq (A7) is similar to Eqn (1), with the term [tan y=p]
dv ¼ dx ðA6Þ replacing k.
pp