Have been widely studied influence clinker's micro structural and mineralogical characteristics on its grinding behaviour, due to high cost of this stage at the end of the fabrication process and the requirements of market quality. In this work, one used the optical microscope and the magnifying glass to describe and analyze the samples of particles of various sizes of clinker, deriving from a factory at south of Brazil. Through this study, it was evidenced, in the samples collected, the occurrence of a high degree of corrosion the minerals of alite and belite. It was even observed that the size of particles do not influence the quantity of microcracks, because that is of physical-chemical origin and it do not mechanical. Therefore, it was concluded that corrosion lead to formation of a large quantity of pores and many channels, make easy the formation of microcracks, that increase, in turn, the grinding behaviour of cement clinker, but at expenses of a considerable reduction in the cement quality.
Clinker; Grinding; cement; Optical microscopy
