Determination of partition surface of grained material by means of non-classical approximation methods of distributions functions of particle size and density

In this paper, the grained material analyzed was hard coal collected from one of the mines located in Upper Silesia. Material was collected from a dust jig where it was separated in industrial conditions by concentrate and waste. It was then screened in sieves and it was separated in dense media into density fractions. Both particle size distribution and particle density distribution for feed and concentrate were approximated by several classical distribution functions. The best results were obtained by means of the Weibull (RRB) distribution function. However, because of the unsatisfying quality of approximations it was decided to apply non-parametric statistical methods, which became more and more popular alternative methods in conducting statistical investigations. In the paper, the kernel methods were applied to this purpose and the Gauss kernel was accepted as the kernel function. Kernel method, which is relatively new, gave much better results than classical distribution functions by means of the least squared method. Both classical and non-parametric obtained distribution functions were evaluated by means of mean standard error, the values of which proved that they sufficiently well approximate the empirical data. Such function forms were then applied to determine the theoretical distribution function for vector (D, P), where D is the random variable describing particle size and P – its density. This approximation was sufficiently acceptable. That is why it served to determine the equation of partition surface dependent on particle size and particle density describing researched material. The obtained surface proves that it is possible to evaluate material separation which occurs during mineral processing operations, such as jigging, by means of more than one feature of researched material. Furthermore, its quality confirms that it is justified to apply non-parametric statistical methods instead of commonly used classical ones.