Coal Strength an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
There are different ways of estimating coal strength and hardness—compressive strength, fracture toughness, or grindability—but all will show a trend relative to rank, type, and grade of the coal. The measurement of coal strength is affected by the size of the test specimen, the orientation of stress relative to banding, and the confining pressure of the test (Hobbs, 1964; Zipf and Bieniawski, 1990; Mark and Barton, 1996; and Medhurst and Brown, 1998).