title: Method of modelling the compaction behaviour of cylindrical pharmaceutical tablets.
abstract: The mechanisms involved for compaction of pharmaceutical powders have become a crucial step in the development cycle for robust tablet design with required properties. Compressibility of pharmaceutical materials is measured by a force-displacement relationship which is commonly analysed using a well known method, the Heckel model. This model requires the true density and compacted powder mass value to determine the powder mean yield pressure. In this paper, we present a technique for shape modelling of pharmaceutical tablets based on the use of partial differential equations (PDEs). This work also presents an extended formulation of the PDE method to a higher dimensional space by increasing the number of parameters responsible for describing the surface in order to generate a solid tablet. Furthermore, the volume and the surface area of the parametric cylindrical tablet have been estimated numerically. Finally, the solution of the axisymmetric boundary value problem for a finite cylinder subject to a uniform axial load has been utilised in order to model the displacement components of a compressed PDE-based representation of a tablet. The Heckel plot obtained from the developed model shows that the model is capable of predicting the compaction behaviour of pharmaceutical materials since it fits the experimental data accurately.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Visual Computing, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK. n.b.ahmat@bradford.ac.uk
authors.forename: Norhayati
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ahmat
authors.forename: Hassan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ugail
authors.forename: Gabriela González
authors.initials: GG
authors.lastname: Castro
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D004339:Drug Compounding / Q000379:methods*; D011208:Powders / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D011312:Pressure; D013607:Tablets
chemical_list: D011208:Powders; D013607:Tablets