A replaceable wear pad apparatus for a crawler track of a construction machine includes an elongated reinforcing element having first and second sides. The invention also relates to a method for making abrasive grains based on alumina consisting in melting alumina, casting it at a constant flow rate less than 80 kgmn, and cooling it by dispersing the melted alumina in fine droplets to obtain articles with size less than 1 mm. Homogeneous segmentation may be suboptimal.