Effect of drug content and drug particle size on the change in particle size during tablet compression

Three size fractions for each of three poorly soluble drugs were compressed into 10 mm diameter tablets of four different dilution ratios. The compression was carried out on a physical testing instrument at four compression levels of 49.0, 98.1, 196.2 and 294.3 MN m-2. The effect of drug content and drug particle size on the change in particle size during tableting was examined by the determination of the dissolution rate for disintegrated tablets. A linear relation was obtained when plotting 1n(T80%) versus drug content. There was a critical particle size where the phenomena of cleavage and bonding during tableting balanced each other, but this varied with drug content.