Investigation of oxide ratio effects on tile characteristics by using experimental design method

Seramic sector is one of the leading energy consuming industry for which of production factors primarily on firing and drying. Industry needs to reduce costs in order to gain competitive advantages to survive so this important necessity enforced numerous research and development efforts especially focused on fast firing. To investigation of the effects of composition and design of receipt using in floor tile production especially on the mechanism of sintering behaviour of ceramic body are very esssential issues to regenerate new inovative receipt on fast firing. Because there are large number of variables forming the recipe, it would become very hard to stabilize these related variables in decisive constraint. In this study, the influence of Seger ratio (SiO2/Al2O3, Na2O/K2O, MgO/CaO) on the floor tile properties were investigated. Experiments were designed as 2132 multi-level factorial design and individual effects of main factors and their interactions were determined. Shrinkage %, water absorbtion %, green and sintered strength measurements of the specimens were determined. Minerological and phase analysis of the representative samples were analysed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), microstructure analysis was carried out by scanning electron microscobe (SEM). Results were analysed with MINITAB 13.20 statistical software program. It has been found that main factors affect final properties of floor tile rather than interaction factors.