The Cosmic Ray Elemental Composition Based on Measurement of the $N_{\mu}/N_{ch}$ Ratio with KASCADE-Grande

The KASCADE-Grande experiment, located at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, is a multi-component Ex- tensive Air Shower (EAS) detector studying primary cosmic rays in the 10 16 10 18 eV energy range. In this contribution a measurement of the cosmic ray chemical composition, based on the comparison of the experimental distributions of the ratio between the EAS muon size and the total charged size (Nµ/Nch) with those expected from a complete EAS simulation based on the QGSJet II-03 interaction model, is presented. It has already been shown that, in the frame of this interaction model, the detector performances allow to separate three dif ferent mass groups: light, intermediate and heavy. With the employed technique, the relative abundances of the three mass groups are derived and their evolution as a function of the charged particle size is observed.