The Intelligent Crusher: A Reinforcement Learning Framework for Sensor-Fused Microwave-Assisted Comminution: Design and Simulation-Based Validation

Comminution is the most energy-intensive stage of mineral processing, and microwave-assisted comminution (MAC) can reduce grinding energy by selectively heating microwave-absorbing minerals within transparent gangue, generating thermal microcracks that improve liberation. MAC performance, however, depends on the ore mineralogy and surface, which fixed-parameter operation cannot accommodate. An integrated mechatronic “intelligent crusher” is presented unifying actuation (microwave source, feed system, adjustable crusher geometry), sensing (thermal infrared and hyperspectral imaging, HSI), and control (offline reinforcement learning). HSI-derived mineralogical features and infrared thermal features form the state of a behavior-regularized actor–critic (BRAC) controller trained offline on logged operating data to adjust the power, exposure, feed rate, and crusher setting. A two-dimensional coupled electromagnetic–thermal–mechanical finite-element study underpins the process model. It is executed with temperature-independent dielectric properties in a single staggered coupling pass, and so calibrates the damage law qualitatively rather than predicting stress quantitatively. It reproduces cracking thresholds from the literature and shows that thermal gradients decay with exposure time as (1 + t/τ)−0.57, so that damage at a constant dose falls from 0.63 to 0.02 as exposure lengthens from 0.25 to 16 s. On this basis, the phenomenological damage law, which had been exposure-insensitive, is corrected. On the FEA-calibrated simulator, the BRAC policy reduces the mean size targeting error by 62% (1.43 to 0.54 mm) and the total specific energy by 4.2% (6.50 to 6.22 kWh/t), averaged over five training seeds, relative to fixed-parameter operation, outperforms rule-based and behavior-cloning baselines, and generalizes to a simulated ore batch excluded from the training. The framework establishes a validated control architecture for adaptive MAC ahead of three-dimensional model extension and experimental deployment.