Determination of Optimum Alloy Sample Size for Ball Mill Abrasion Test Through Automated t-Student Distribution Analysis

Inmaterial wear experiments, such as the Ball Mill Abrasion Test (BMAT), it iscrucial to know the number of specimens to be used in each experiment toproduce accurate and reliable results. In BMAT, however, a structured way ofdetermining the necessary number of balls per type of material to be includedin the experiments has not been considered to date. This article shows, usingstatistical tools and adhering to the standards that govern these experiments,that the optimal number of balls per type of material to be included in eachexperiment is 6. In addition, it is shown that if the initial differences betweenthe balls are reduced, it is possible to obtain more accurate and reliableresults.