Fast Firing Porcelain

Abstract

Fast firing of commercial porcelains continues to be an important aspect of ceramic manufacturing. The ability to predict the firing conditions necessary to densify a given body could be quite valuable as a means to compensate for raw material chemistry variations, the introduction of new production kilns, or the variation of an existing firing cycle within a production environment. Previous work demonstrated that mineralogy, microstructure evolution, and densification can be accurately predicted over a broad range of temperatures and dwell times, but this work was only conducted on a single composition. To allow the generation of a more widely applicable model, it is necessary to demonstrate that this model is valid over a wide chemistry range. Ten compositions, fired over a broad range of temperature and time conditions, were used to develop a model that is valid for the experimental bodies in this thesis and is valid for the composition from previous work. In addition, a more general relationship is proposed that relates densification to the amount of glass formed during heat treatment.