Using Experiments Design to Model the Effect of Raw Materials on the Sintering and Technological Properties of Brick Compositions

Mixtures of clays are often used in the manufacture of bricks. In industrial practice, it is desirable to be able to predict, in an expeditious way, what the effects of a change in raw materials or the proportions thereof might be in the various processing steps towards the final product. When the property of interest is basically determined by the combination of raw materials, an optimisation methodology specific to the design of mixture experiments can be successfully used. In the present study, fired bending strength and linear firing shrinkage were selected as the properties to model. Ten formulations of three different clays were selected and used in the experiments design. Those formulations were wet processed, uniaxially pressed, and then fired at 1000 °C for 2 h.. From the experimental results, regression models were calculated, relating each technological property with the proportions of raw materials. The regression models were then used simultaneously to define which combination of those three raw materials was most adequate to produce, under constant processing conditions, a brick with specified properties.

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