The tensile strength of tablets compressed from binary mixtures is in general not linearly related to the strength of tablets prepared from single materials; in many cases it shows a decreased tensile strength relative to interpolation. The materials used in this study, sodium chloride and pregelatinised starch, are both plastically deforming materials, but have a different densification and relaxation behaviour. The yield pressure of the binary mixtures shows an almost linear relationship. As an effect of their lower yield pressure, starch particles yield earlier than sodium chloride particles. The following enclosure prevents some sodium chloride particles to yield or crack. The relaxation of the tablets is higher than the relaxation calculated by linear interpolation of the relaxation behaviour of the two pure materials. The difference between the measured porosity expansion and the data obtained by linear interpolation can be considered as a measure for the reduced interparticle bonding. SEM-photographs indicate that the reduced interparticle bonding is caused by the low adhesive forces. The measured decrease of the tensile strength of the tablets is also considered to be the result of reduced interparticle bonding. In this paper it is shown that there exists a similar relationship between the tensile strength reduction and the percentage of starch on the one hand and the extra porosity expansion and the starch percentage on the other hand. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
