Feinkörnigen

Feinkörnigen is the inflected form of the German adjective feinkörnig, meaning fine-grained or finely textured. It is used in German to describe materials that consist predominantly of very small particles.

In geology and soil science, feinkörnigen describes soils or sediments with small particle sizes. A common practical threshold is particles smaller than about 0.075 millimeters, which characterizes fine-grained soils such as clay and silt, in contrast to coarser sands or gravels. The term often appears in phrases like feinkörnigen Sand or feinkörnigen Ton and is relevant for properties such as plasticity, permeability, and compaction behavior.

In everyday language and technical writing, feinkörnigen occurs as an attributive or predicative form, as in feinkörnige Partikel (fine-grained particles) or feinkörnigen Sand (fine-grained sand). The texture implied by the term can influence processing and performance in applications ranging from construction and geotechnical work to materials engineering.

In materials science, feinkörnigen materials refer to powders or aggregates with high surface area due to small particle size. Such fine-grained materials are common in ceramics and powder metallurgy, where particle size distribution affects milling, drying, handling, sintering, and final properties like strength and density.

Etymology note: the term derives from fein (fine) and Korn (grain) with the adjectival suffix -ig, with -en form used for certain grammatical cases in German. See also grain size, particle size distribution, sedimentology, and powder metallurgy.