Clinker ceramics are artificial stone materials of a set shape, produced from clay by firing in the temperature range of 1250 - 1350 ° C until complete sintering without vitrification of the surface. These goods belong to the so-called rough shard goods. Compared to conventional products of coarse building ceramics (ordinary bricks, tiles, facing tiles), clinker ceramic materials are distinguished by higher mechanical strength (compressive, abrasion, bending) and lower water absorption (0-6% by weight). Such high performance is ensured by their structure and phase composition, somewhat different from those in ceramic shards. Clinker ceramic materials contain an increased amount of glass phase. The structure of clinker ceramic materials is dense, micro-grained, without large inclusions, voids and cavities. It is this that provides such high performance characteristics.
In the eternal city of Odessa there is an intersection of Italian (Pushkinskaya) and Lanzheronovskaya (Lastochkina) streets. Every Odessa resident knows it, and many visitors remember it for a long time because of the unusual sandy-yellow color of the pavement. The pavement at the intersection is probably one of the oldest in Europe among those laid with clinker paving stones. Over 150 years of operation, the pavement surface has never been repaired, and traffic on it has never been interrupted. Only a few bricks fell out of the clinker pavement, and even those, it seemed, had been torn out by city guests as a good memory. Otherwise, the yellow intersection looks as if it was paved only yesterday.
Clinker as a technology has a venerable age (more than 150 years) and a well-deserved reputation in the world of finishing materials. We can say that a century and a half ago, clinker bricks and tiles occupied a niche in which only very recently (in the early 90s of the 20th century) they had their first real competitor - porcelain stoneware (ceramic granite). As a construction and finishing material, clinker has the following varieties:
- General purpose ceramic facing tiles for exterior and interior decoration of buildings (floors, walls, stairs and other architectural elements);
- Technical clinker: road clinker (pavement bricks or tiles) - for paving roads, sidewalks, walkways, patios and the like; materials for floors of public and industrial buildings, including those with high operational load; acid-resistant materials - for lining tanks and finishing storage facilities in industries with aggressive conditions (bricks and ceramic tiles of various styles); waterproof clinker for hydraulic structures;
- Special extruded parts for cladding complex architectural forms.
In addition to low porosity and high mechanical strength (compressive, bending, abrasion), certain types of clinker ceramic materials have their own special requirements. For example, for hydraulic clinker, it is not so much strength that is important as water absorption, which should not exceed 2% by weight. For finishing varieties, appearance and the absence of visible defects are more important; for road clinker, strength indicators are decisive.
The article was based on the following materials:
Bashkir Chemical Journal. 2010. Vol. 17. No. 4
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Crossroads in Odessa with clinker paving stones
Yes, I’ve been to Odessa and seen this intersection with sandy-yellow clinker paving stones. Indeed, the pavement is still in excellent condition. After walking along the paving stones, the question arises: why were only 100 meters paved? The fact is that when the fathers of the eternal city were puzzled by replacing the street surface, then the enterprising Dutch, who were the first to establish mass production of clinker in Europe, delivered a batch of bricks to the city by sea, and paved the busy intersection as an advertisement. However, the anti-slip notch was not yet known, and the coating was considered excessively slippery. In rainy weather, residents and even horse riders repeatedly fell.
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