traditional ceramics

Introduction

      ceramic materials that are derived from common, naturally occurring raw materials such as clay minerals and quartz sand. Through industrial processes that have been practiced in some form for centuries, these materials are made into such familiar products as china tableware, clay brick and tile, industrial abrasives and refractory linings, and portland cement. This article describes the basic characteristics of the raw materials commonly used in traditional ceramics, and it surveys the general processes that are followed in the fabrication of most traditional ceramic objects. From this survey the reader can proceed to more detailed articles on the individual types of ceramic products, links to which are provided at the end of this article.

      Traditional ceramic objects are almost as old as the human race. Naturally occurring abrasives were undoubtedly used to sharpen primitive wood and stone tools, and fragments of useful clay vessels have been found dating from the Neolithic Period, some 10,000 years ago. Not long after the first crude clay vessels were made, people learned how to make them stronger, harder, and less permeable to fluids by burning. These advances were followed by structural clay products, including brick and tile. Clay-based bricks, strengthened and toughened with fibres such as straw, were among the earliest composite materials. Artistic uses of pottery also achieved a high degree of sophistication, especially in China, the Middle East, and the Americas.

      With the advent of the Metal Age some 5,000 years ago, early smiths capitalized on the refractory nature of common quartz sand to make molds for the casting of metals—a practice still employed in modern foundries. The Greeks and Romans developed lime-mortar cements, and the Romans in particular used the material to construct remarkable civil engineering works, some of which remain standing to this day. The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries saw rapid improvements in the processing of ceramics, and the 20th century saw a growth in the scientific understanding of these materials. Even in the age of modern advanced ceramics, traditional ceramic products, made in large quantities by efficient, inexpensive manufacturing methods, still make up the bulk of ceramics sales worldwide. The scale of plant operations can rival those found in the metallurgical and petrochemical industries.

Raw materials

      Because of the large volumes of product involved, traditional ceramics tend to be manufactured from naturally occurring raw materials. In most cases these materials are silicates—that is, compounds based on silica (SiO₂), an oxide form of the element silicon. In fact, so common is the use of silicate minerals that traditional ceramics are often referred to as silicate ceramics, and their manufacture is often called the silicate industry. Many of the silicate materials are actually unmodified or chemically modified aluminosilicates (alumina [Al₂O₃] plus silica), although silica is also used in its pure form. Altogether, the raw materials employed in traditional ceramics fall into three commonly recognized groups: clay, silica, and feldspar. These groups are described below.

Clay

      Clay minerals (clay mineral) such as kaolinite (Al₂[Si₂O₅][OH]₄) are secondary geologic deposits, having been formed by the weathering of igneous rocks under the influence of water, dissolved carbon dioxide, and organic acids. The largest deposits are believed to have formed when feldspar (KAlSi₃O₈) was eroded from rocks such as granite and was deposited in lake beds, where it was subsequently transformed into clay.

      The importance of clay minerals to traditional ceramic development and processing cannot be overemphasized. In addition to being the primary source of aluminosilicates, these minerals have layered crystal structures that result in plate-shaped particles of extremely small micrometre size. When these particles are suspended in or mixed with water, the mixture exhibits unusual rheology, or flow under pressure. This behaviour allows for such diverse processing methods as slip casting and plastic forming, which are described below. Clay minerals are therefore considered to be formers, allowing the mixed ingredients to be formed into the desired shape.

silica and feldspar

      Other constituents of traditional ceramics are silica and feldspar. Silica is a major ingredient in refractories and whitewares. It is usually added as quartz sand, sandstone, or flint pebbles. The role of silica is that of a filler, used to impart “green” (that is, unfired) strength to the shaped object and to maintain that shape during firing. It also improves final properties. Feldspars are aluminosilicates that contain sodium (Na), potassium (K), or calcium (Ca). They range in composition from NaAlSi₃O₈ and KAlSi₃O₈ to CaAl₂Si₂O₈. Feldspars act as fluxing agents to reduce the melting temperatures of the aluminosilicate phases.

Processing

beneficiation

      Compared with other manufacturing industries, far less mineral beneficiation (e.g., washing, concentrating, sizing of particulates) is employed for silicate ceramics. Clays going into common structural brick and tile are often processed directly as dug out of the ground, although there may be some blending, aging, and tempering for uniform distribution in water. Such impure clays are workable in untreated form because they already contain fillers and fluxes in association with the clay minerals. In the case of whitewares, for which the raw materials must be in a purer state, the clays are washed, and impurities are either settled out or floated off. Silicas are purified by washing and separating unwanted minerals by gravity and by magnetic and electrostatic means. Feldspars are beneficiated by flotation separation, a process in which a frothing agent is added to separate the desired material from impurities.

Blending

      The calculation of amounts, weighing, and initial blending of raw materials prior to forming operations is known as batching. Batching has always constituted much of the art of the ceramic technologist. Formulas are traditionally jealously guarded secrets, involving the selection of raw materials that confer the desired working characteristics and responses to firing and that yield the sought-after character and properties. Clays must be selected on the basis of workability, fusibility, fired colour, and other requirements. Silicas, likewise, must meet criteria of chemical purity and particle size distribution.

Forming

      The fine, platy morphology of clay particles is used to advantage in the forming of clay-based ceramic products. Depending upon the amount of water added, clay-water bodies can be stiff or plastic. Plasticity arises by virtue of the plate-shaped clay particles slipping over one another during flow. (Nonclay ceramics can be similarly formed if plasticizers—usually polymers—are added to their mixes. In many cases organic binders are used to help hold the body together until it is fired.) With even higher water content and the addition of dispersing agents to keep the clay particles in suspension, readily flowable suspensions can be produced. These suspensions are called slips or slurries and are employed in the slip casting of clay bodies. The mechanisms of plastic forming and slip casting are described below.

Plastic forming

      Plastic forming is the primary means of shaping clay-based ceramics. After the raw materials are mixed and blended into a stiff mud or plastic mix, a variety of forming techniques are employed to produce useful shapes, depending upon the ceramic involved and the type of product desired. Foremost among these techniques are pressing and extrusion.

      Pressing involves the application of pressure to eliminate porosity and achieve a specific shape, depending upon the die employed. Refractory bricks, for example, are often made by die (die-casting) presses that are either single-action (pressing from the top only) or dual-action (simultaneously pressing from top and bottom). Structural clay products such as brick and tile can be made in the same fashion. In pressing operations the feed material tends to have a lower water content and is referred to as a stiff mud.

      The problem with die casting is that it is a piecemeal rather than a continuous process, thereby limiting throughput. Many silicate ceramics are therefore manufactured by extrusion, a process that allows a more efficient continuous production. In a commercial screw-type extruder, a screw auger continuously forces the plastic feed material through an orifice or die, resulting in simple shapes such as cylindrical rods and pipes, rectangular solid and hollow bars, and long plates. These shapes can be cut upon extrusion into shorter pieces for bricks and tiles.

Slip casting

 A different approach to the forming of clay-based ceramics is taken in slip casting of whiteware, as shown in Figure 1—>. As mentioned above, with sufficient water content and the addition of suitable dispersing agents, clay-water mixtures can be made into suspensions called slurries or slips. These highly stable suspensions of clay particles in water arise from the careful manipulation of surface charges on the platelike clay particles. Without a dispersing agent, oppositely charged edges and surfaces of the particles would attract, leading to flocculation, a process in which groups of particles coagulate into flocs with a characteristic house-of-cards structure. Dispersing agents neutralize some of the surface charges, so that the particles can be made to repel one another and remain in suspension indefinitely. When the suspension is poured into a porous plaster mold, capillary forces suck the water into the mold from the slip and cause a steady deposition of clay particles, in dense face-to-face packing, on the inside surface of the mold. After a sufficient thickness of deposit has been obtained, the remaining slip can be poured off or drained and the mold opened to reveal a freestanding clay piece that can be dried and fired. Surprisingly complex shapes can be achieved through slip casting.

Firing

kiln operation

      After careful drying to remove evaporable water, clay-based ceramics undergo gradual heating to remove structural water, to decompose and burn off any organic binders used in forming, and to achieve consolidation of the ware. Batches of specialty products, produced in smaller volumes, are cycled up and down in so-called batch furnaces. Most mass-produced traditional ceramics, on the other hand, are fired in tunnel kilns. These consist of continuous conveyor belt or railcar operations, with the ware traversing the kiln and gradually being heated from room temperature, through a hot zone, and back down to room temperature. Pyrometric cones, which deform and sag at specific temperatures, often ride with the ware to monitor the highest temperature seen in the traverse through the kiln.

Vitrification

 The ultimate purpose of firing is to achieve some measure of bonding of the particles (for strength) and consolidation or reduction in porosity (e.g., for impermeability to fluids). In silicate-based ceramics, bonding and consolidation are accomplished by partial vitrification. Vitrification is the formation of glass, accomplished in this case through the melting of crystalline silicate compounds into the amorphous, noncrystalline atomic structure associated with glass. As the formed ware is heated in the kiln, the clay component turns into progressively larger amounts of glass. The partial vitrification process can be analyzed through a phase diagram such as that shown in Figure 2—>. In this diagram three crystalline phases are shown: the end members cristobalite (one crystallographic form of silica [SiO₂]) and alumina (Al₂O₃) and an intermediate compound, mullite (3Al₂O₃ · 2SiO₂). The melting points of alumina and cristobalite, as shown on the left and right edges of the diagram, are quite high. However, intermediate compositions begin to melt at lower temperatures. As shown by the two horizontal lines on the diagram, melting begins to occur at 1,828° C (3,322° F) for high alumina compositions and as low as 1,587° C (2,889° F) for high silica compositions. (These temperatures can be lowered still further by the addition of fluxing agents, such as alkali or alkaline-earth oxide feldspars.) Between the two horizontal lines and the region of the diagram marked liquid, all compositions are only partly liquid (e.g., mullite and liquid, alumina and liquid). This partial vitrification allows for the retention of solid particles, which helps to maintain the rigidity of the ceramic piece during firing in order to minimize sagging or warpage.

      The role of the glassy liquid phase in the consolidation of fired clay objects is to facilitate liquid-phase or reactive-liquid sintering. In these processes the liquid first brings about a denser rearrangement of particles by viscous flow. Second, through solution-precipitation of the solid phases, small particles and surfaces of larger particles dissolve and reprecipitate at the growing “necks” that connect large particles. Rearrangement and solution-precipitation lead to bond formation and to progressive densification with reduction of porosity. A range of glass contents and residual porosities can be obtained, depending on the ingredients and the time the object is held at maximum temperature.

Finishing

      If fired ceramic ware is porous and fluid impermeability is desired, or if a purely decorative finish is desired, the product can be glazed. In glazing, a glass-forming formulation is pulverized and suspended in an appropriate solvent. The fired ceramic body is dipped in or painted with the glazing slurry, and it is refired at a temperature that is lower than its initial firing temperature but high enough to vitrify the glaze formulation. Glazes can be coloured by the addition of specific transition-metal or rare-earth elements to the glaze glass or by the suspension of finely divided ceramic particles in the glaze.

Products

      The raw materials and manufacturing processes outlined above produce a range of traditional ceramic products. These products are described in some detail in separate articles on whiteware, structural clay products, brick and tile, refractory, abrasive, and cement.

Additional Reading

A good introduction to ceramics is provided by David W. Richerson, Modern Ceramic Engineering: Properties, Processing, and Use in Design, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded (1992). The processing of traditional ceramics is described in F.H. Norton, Elements of Ceramics, 2nd ed. (1974); James S. Reed, Introduction to the Principles of Ceramic Processing (1988); George Y. Onoda, Jr., and Larry L. Hench, Ceramic Processing Before Firing (1978); and four sections of Theodore J. Reinhart (ed.), Engineered Materials Handbook, vol. 4, Ceramics and Glasses, ed. by Samuel J. Schneider (1991): “Ceramic Powders and Processing,” pp. 41–122; “Forming and Predensification, and Nontraditional Densification Processes,” pp. 123–241; “Firing/Sintering: Densification,” pp. 242–312; and “Final Shaping and Surface Finishing,” pp. 313–376.Thomas O. Mason

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