Drying and burning solid and hollow ceramic bricks including dimensional variations and structural damage

The aim of this research is to study the drying, firing and thermal shock in holed red ceramic clay bricks with different dimensions and initial moisture content. In the drying process, several relative humidities and temperatures were used, and thus several curves of the drying kinetics and shrinkage are shown and analyzed. The drying process takes place in the falling rate period and the shrinkage happens in two periods. From compression test was obtained values of compression resistance module (σf) around 2.49 MPa and 2.79 MPa for bricks fired at 900°C and 950°C, respectively and for the same bricks it was obtained thermal shock resistance (RCT) of 430.24W/m and 549.91W/m, respectively. For experimental conditions of thermal shock it was not found structural damages for the samples. (author)