(264c) Particle Shape Characterizing Descriptors Defined in a First Iso Standard

The Draft International Standard ISO 9276-6 specifies rules and a nomenclature for the description and quantitative representation of particle shape and morphology. To achieve a more comprehensive characteristic of a particle or particle system, particle size information can be complemented, but in most cases not replaced. The relevance of any measure or method of shape representation to technological applications has to be the deciding factor for its selection and not the complete reconstruction of the geometric particle form. Therefore this standard is restricted to characterization methods which can be correlated to physical properties in industrial applications. The vision of particle analysis has to be the determination of the most appropriate characterisation method for a certain application problem. This requires a profound understanding, on the one hand, of the relationship between particle characteristics and macroscopic product and process properties (or at least a broad empirical data base) and the relationship between an effective particle characteristic and the measurable dimension, on the other hand. Shape and morphology originally address three dimensional problems, but actually most definitions in this standard are given for two dimensions because of the wide spread of image analysis methods.