Studies on the physico-mineralogical and mechanical properties of ancient and contemporary bricks of Kathmandu valley (Nepal)

5^th International Conference and Expo on Ceramics and Composite Materials

June 03-04, 2019 | London, UK

Jagadeesh Bhattarai, Yagya P Chapagain, Dol B Ghale, Narendra B Bohara, Pramod Budhathoki and Nirjan Duwal

Tribhuvan University, Nepal
St. Xavier College, Nepal

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Material Sci Eng

Abstract :

The mineralogical composition of the clay raw materials used for the production of different types of ceramic products like tiles, contemporary and ancient clay bricks is one of the main quality indicators of its physicomechanical properties. Hence, it is considered that the mineralogical phase analysis of the clay-based bricks is one of the important aspects of studies for the approximate estimation of physico-chemical and mechanical properties. It is said that mechanical strength, i.e., durability of clay bricks depends on their physico-mineralogical properties. The mineralogical, physical and mechanical properties of the fired clay bricks are generally inter-related to each others. Considering these facts, present work was focused to investigate the properties of mineralogical composition, water absorbtivity (WA), apparent porosity (AP), bulk density (BD) and compressive strength (CS) of twenty four different types of contemporary (17 samples) and ancient (7 samples) bricks of Katmandu valley using XRD, FTIR techniques and ASTM standards. Minerals in the analyzed brick samples were found mainly of quartz, feldspars, spinel with primary mullite, muscovite, margarite and hematite. Disappearance of feldspars and appearance of the alumina-rich spinel and primary mullite phase peaks in all brick samples are not same degree indicating that the firing temperature used to produce these brick samples should not be same. It is a good correlation between the physical properties of WA, AP and BD with CS for both types of ancient and contemporary brick samples. In general, compressive strength of all analyzed samples is found to be increased with decreasing the WA and AP, and with increasing the BD as depicted in Figs 1(a) and 1(b). Furthermore, the durability of ancient bricks seems to be more than contemporary ones.

Recent Publicatiotns

1. Bohara N B, Bhat L B, Ghale D B, Duwal N and Bhattarai J (2019) Investigation of the firing temperature effects on clay brick sample; Part-I: Mineralogical phase characterization. Bibechana 16:122-130.

2. Bordia R K and Camacho-Montes H (2012) Sintering: Fundamentals and practice in ceramics and composites processing methods, part-1: Densification. In Bansal NP & Boccaccini AR (eds), 1st edition, The American Ceramic Society, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 3-42.

Biography :

Jagadeesh Bhattarai has completed his PhD in the Institute of Materials Research at Tohoku University, Japan in 1998. He has been working for more than thirty years as a Faculty Member of Chemistry in Central Department of Chemistry at Tribhuvan University, Nepal and had promoted to Full Professor of Chemistry in 2013. He had carried out research works at Tokyo Institute of Technology from 1991-92 in the field of Clay Mineralogy and Tohoku Institute of Technology from 2007-08 in Japan. He has published more than 125 papers in reputed journals. Currently, he is the Chief Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Institute of Science & Technology an official journal of Institute of Science & Technology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal.

E-mail: bhattarai_05@yahoo.com