Development of a multipurpose tile body: Phase and microstructural development
Introduction
Ceramic tiles are commonly produced from a mixture of raw materials containing clay, flux, and refractory filler. Each raw material within the body formulation contributes differently to the final properties. A broad range of products varying in dimensions, dimensional tolerance, strength, apparent porosity, surface texture, decorative coatings, and overall quality are produced by the tiles industry. Since tile have high ratio of surface area to thickness, manufacturing process should be capable of achieving this shape in a highly productive manner. This type of tiles is usually obtained by wet grinding, dry pressing, fast drying and fast firing at suitable temperatures. Understanding and control of process steps in tile production has greatly improved within the recent years. In the relevant literature, several directions for further improvements have been mentioned. Among these directions: achieving better dimensional control, which is particularly more demanding for larger tiles, obtaining green granules with improved characteristics through dry preparation process, which is expected to enable lower running and production costs, and effective use of processing additives for improving process performance can be mentioned as important ones.1 Moreover, the new research + development + innovation (R + D + I) lines, particularly relating to porcelain tile manufacturing technology, have also been suggested in areas such as in-press tile decoration and forming methods.2
Apart from the directions mentioned above, development of a multipurpose ceramic composite body suitable for both wall and floor tile production has already been reported. A monoporosa body composition cannot be fired at a higher temperature in order to obtain a vitrified product due to its rapid and uncontrolled melting. Moreover, a vitrified body cannot be properly used as wall tile, because its high firing shrinkage results in different sizes. On the other hand, a multipurpose body can fulfil the dimensional and mechanical requirements of both wall and floor tile through production in the same line. It has also been emphasized that the potential of such a body should be considered beyond its plant flexibility contribution, which improves the finished product quality, thus increasing profits, with the obvious possibility of improving the entire tile industry.3
There are around 22 ceramic tile manufacturing plants in Turkey and in 2003 these plants produced nearly 190 million square meters of tiles. Eight-four million square meters of this production was exported, which makes Turkey the fifth biggest exporter of the world.4 Considering the expectation that the Turkish tile sector continues to expand, further studies both on the improvement and the development of tile formulations, mainly from the local raw materials, are necessary in order to make the producers advantaged in the world market while maintaining the capital and running costs at reasonably competitive levels as well. Keeping this in mind, the present study, which is a part of an extended research program, was designed in two sections: the first part involved developing a multipurpose tile body using a single formulation; the second part focused on firing behaviour of the multipurpose tile body in relation to its technological properties. A particular interest was given to crystalline phase and microstructural evolution upon firing. Glazing issue was, however, ignored in this part of the research program.
Section snippets
Materials and methods
The main raw materials employed to prepare the various formulations in this study are sodium feldspar from Cine region of Aydın/Turkey, two different pegmatites from Sogut region of Bilecik/Turkey, two different ball clays, one from Sile region of Istanbul/Turkey, and the other from Ukraine, and marble and magnesite from Eskisehir/Turkey. It is well known that characteristics of the raw materials used to prepare ceramic bodies considerably affect the ultimate product quality. In this respect,
Physical and thermal properties
Table 5 gives the particle size distributions of the multipurpose wall and tile bodies, obtained by wet sieve analysis. Furthermore, Table 6 presents some of the important properties of the investigated bodies fired at the relevant peak firing temperatures under industrial conditions in the first part of the study. A comparison of the standard wall and floor tile bodies with the multipurpose tile bodies was made according to the main technological properties measured. The L*-value (lightness)
Conclusions
As a result of the preparation of a series of body formulations at different sieve residues mainly from local raw materials and firing over a range of peak temperatures, a multipurpose body was produced, almost fulfilling the requirements of both wall and floor tiles in accordance with ISO-EN 10545. In particular, the sieve residues of 3.0% for the floor tile and 5.5% for the wall tile were close to the industrial ideal for a multipurpose body.
The vitrification behaviour of the multipurpose
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