Abstarct: Effect of grinding media shape on particle breakage from the points of view of the breakage rate and breakage distribution function has been investigated extensively in ball mills. However, the effect of media shape on rod mills performance has not been studied. Grinding media shape is an important factor in the interaction between media and particles. Hence, there might be opportunities for improving the performance of rod mills by optimising the cross-sectional shape of rods. In this study, a proposed cross-sectional shape for rods (grooved rods) is tested in a laboratory dry rod mill. The objective of the proposed design is to promote of coarse particles breakage and protect finer particles from breakage to reduce the fine generation. Experimental data collected from tests with regular rods and grooved rods are used along with the (Austin) ball mill model to model the effect of media shape on breakage kinetic (breakage rate) and the breakage function. Experiments are performed using mono size materials of seven sizes from a copper-gold ore and a silicate quarry mine. The same distribution of media diameters is used for the regular and grooved rods. All tests are conducted at void fill fraction, U=100% in dry mode. A torque sensor is utilised to measure the power draw of the mill, and the power draw data for each experiment is used to normalise the kinetic data for experiments with varying power draw. The results show that regular rods have a higher breakage rate than grooved rods. However, the sensitivity of the breakage rate to the particle size decreases in the normal breakage region for grooved rods. In this study, the appearance function (the breakage distribution function) for the two types of rods is compared. As it was expected, the data indicates that the breakage distribution function is independent of grinding media shape, and it is dependent on materials property. It is found that the grooved rods could produce fewer fine particles than simple rods. Although the proposed design does not promote breakage of coarse particles, it can reduce the fine generation, which could be desirable for operations that have fine generation problem. Also, the effect of the studied grinding media shapes on the power draw of the mill at different mill speeds and mill filling was compared. With an increase in grinding media weight and mill speed, power consumption was increased for both types of grinding media studied. The specific power rate decreased with increasing the speed and media filling. By increasing mill speed, the sensitivity of the specific power draw to the grinding media filling was increased. The specific power draw of grooved rods at low and medium speeds was shown to be more than that of simple rods, but at speeds above 60% of critical speed, the power draw of the grooved rods was lower than that of the simple rods. Using an empirical model, the experimental and model values were compared. The results showed that the prediction of mill power draw using of presented empirical model, in the range of low and medium speeds is more reliable. However, as speed increases, its credibility decreases. On the other hand, the performance of grooved rods as a lifter was proved using kinetics data and objective observations. The results showed that the grooved rods have a higher large cataracting movement than the simple rods and the grooves can carry the particles to the top of the mill.