Clinker High-Hollow Ceramic Stones: Prospects for Technology and Application

Abstract

A substantiation is given for the prospects of using clinker large-format ceramic stones of increased hollowness with a water absorption of less than 3% in construction. It has been shown that due to the high strength of the ceramic material itself (more than 100–150 MPa), ceram-ic stones will have the necessary strength – more than 10–15 MPa in terms of compressive strength. Due to the increased void content with as many rows of voids as possible per 100 mm length of the ceramic stone and a smaller thickness of the internal walls, the stones will have reduced thermal conductivity. Due to the low porosity of clinker ceram-ics as a material and the use of appropriate masonry mortars, masonry made of clinker stones will be guaranteed not to be vapor permeable, which will significantly increase the service life of buildings. When us-ing certain technological techniques, namely the application of cham-fers, relief, engobes on the front faces, large-format high-hollow clinker stones can also play the role of facing products, which will significantly increase their consumer attractiveness. With an increase in the hollow-ness of stones, the costs of mass preparation, drying and firing of products are proportionally reduced, which significantly reduces their cost. It has been shown that the “ideal” raw material for producing clinker large-format ceramic stones can be stone-like clay raw materials – argillite-like clays, argillites, shales and their transitional varieties. When grinding them and preparing molding masses, due to the for-mation of a certain grain composition and the introduction of corrective microadditives, it is possible to obtain molding masses with optimal pre-firing technological properties and a clinker shard with water ab-sorption of up to 3% and a compressive strength of up to 200 using one raw material. MPa, bending strength up to 50 MPa.