The sensitivity of KASCADE-Grande to the cosmic ray primary composition between 1016 and 1018 eV

The goal of the KASCADE-Grande experiment is the study of the cosmic ray energy spectrum and chemical composition in the range 10 16 - 10 18 eV detecting the charged particles of the respective Extensive Air Showers. The observables here taken into account for discussion are the measured electron size (N e ) and muon size (N μ ). It is crucial to verify: the sensitivity to different chemical components, the data reproducibility with the hadronic interaction model in use as a function of the electron size and the athmospheric depth, the consistency with the results obtained by other experiments sensitive to composition in overlapping energy regions. The analysis is presented using KASCADE as reference experiment and using QGSjetII as hadronic interaction model.