brick and tile
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What are bricks and tiles?
Bricks and tiles are structural materials that have been used in building construction for thousands of years. Bricks are small, rectangular blocks made from clay, shale, or mixtures of these materials. They are hardened through firing in a kiln, which gives them strength, hardness, and heat resistance.
Tiles are thin, flat slabs that can be used structurally or decoratively. Traditionally, tiles are made of fired clay, either glazed or unglazed, but modern versions can also be made of materials like plastic or glass. Tile roofs are common in the Mediterranean, but are limited by economic considerations.
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What are bricks and tiles made from?
Bricks and tiles, essential structural clay products, are created from clay or shale mixtures and then fired in a kiln to achieve strength, hardness, and heat resistance. The clays used in brickmaking consist of silica and alumina in varying percentages and are grouped into three classes: surface clays, shales, and fireclays.
Silica, often added as quartz sand, sandstone, or flint pebbles, acts as a filler, improving the green strength (unfired) of the brick or tile and maintaining its shape during firing, as well as improving the final product. Feldspars, aluminosilicates containing sodium, potassium, or calcium, act as fluxing agents to reduce the melting temperatures of the aluminosilicate phases.
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How are bricks and tiles made?
The production of bricks and tiles involves several key stages:
1. Securing and Preparing Clay Raw clay is extracted and prepared for production. Clays are often mixed to achieve a uniform consistency, ground to reduce the size of rocks or clay clumps, and stored. Some clays are processed directly, while others undergo washing and separation to remove impurities.-
Mixing and Forming Clay is mixed with water to achieve plasticity, with the amount of water depending on the clay's nature. The mixture is then formed into the desired shape through methods such as the stiff-mud process (extrusion through a die), the soft-mud process (placing the mix in wooden molds), or the dry-press process (pressing with minimal water in steel molds).
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Drying After forming, the bricks or tiles are dried to remove excess water. This process causes shrinkage, which is accounted for by making the molds larger than the desired final product size.
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Firing and Cooling The dried bricks or tiles are then fired in a kiln, an oven-like chamber that reaches temperatures from 870° to 1,100° C, depending on the raw material. Kilns can be periodic or continuous, with the bricks arranged to allow heat to reach all surfaces. After firing, the bricks are gradually cooled before removal.
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What are the main uses of bricks and tiles in construction?
Bricks and tiles are essential in construction, with the majority utilized in building construction, especially for walls in dwellings, commercial, industrial, and institutional buildings. Tiles are also used for roofs, particularly in the Mediterranean and western Europe.
Walls can be load-bearing, non-load-bearing, or veneer. Load-bearing walls support the structure's loads, while other applications include retaining walls, floors, patios, and walks, offering both decorative and utilitarian functions. Additionally, bricks and tiles are utilized in drainage systems. Floor tiles are typically small and geometric, while wall tiles, which originated in ancient Syria, the Tigris-Euphrates valley, and Persia, can be highly glazed.
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How do the properties of bricks and tiles affect how they are used in buildings?
Bricks and tiles are popular building materials due to qualities like weather resistance, ease of production, and simple transportation.
Bricks are advantageous as a structural material because of their fire and weather resistance, and the relative ease of production, transportation, and installation. Brick's shapes and bricklaying techniques have varied throughout history to meet structural and expressive needs. Bricks are often used in walls, floors, and roofs.
Tiles are thin slabs used structurally or decoratively in buildings. Traditionally made of fired clay, modern tiles can also be plastic, glass, asphalt, or asbestos cement. Modern ceramic roof tiles are similar in form to ancient types, with improvements made in manufacturing methods. Floor tiles are typically small, geometric shapes made of fine clays and are very hard. Wall tiles can be highly glazed or made of fireclay or shale.
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What are some modern innovations in the production or use of bricks and tiles?
Modern innovations in brick and tile production focus on automation to improve efficiency. The brickmaking process, while fundamentally unchanged, now incorporates automated handling of finished products. Bricks are mechanically stacked, strapped, and prepared for shipping without manual intervention after emerging from the tunnel kiln.
Additionally, mechanical systems now place bricks in driers or on drier cars, transfer them to kiln cars using mechanical fingers, and remove them from the kiln cars. Modern brick types maintain a width-to-length ratio of slightly less than 1:2, which allows diverse bonding patterns within a consistent measurement standard.
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brick and tile, structural clay products, manufactured as standard units, used in building construction.
The brick, first produced in a sun-dried form at least 6,000 years ago and the forerunner of a wide range of structural clay products used today, is a small building unit in the form of a rectangular block, formed from clay or shale or mixtures and burned (fired) in a kiln, or oven, to produce strength, hardness, and heat resistance. The original concept of ancient brickmakers was that the unit should not be larger than what one man could easily handle; today, brick size varies from country to country, and every nation’s brickmaking industry produces a range of sizes that may run into the hundreds. The majority of bricks for most construction purposes have dimensions of approximately 5.5 × 9.5 × 20 centimetres (21/4 × 33/4 × 8 inches).
Structural clay tile, also called terra-cotta, is a larger building unit, containing many hollow spaces (cells), and is used mainly as backup for brick facing or for plastered partitions.
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Structural clay-facing tile is often glazed for use as an exposed finish. Wall and floor tile is a thin material of fireclay with a natural or glazed finish. Quarry tile is a dense pressed fireclay product for floors, patios, and industrial installations in which great resistance to abrasion or acids is required.
Fireclay brick is used in incinerators, boilers, industrial and home furnaces, and fireplaces. Sewer pipe is fired and glazed for use in sewage-disposal systems, industrial waste systems, and general drainage. Drain tile is porous, round, and sometimes perforated and is used mainly for agricultural drainage. Roofing tile is made in the form of half-round (Spanish tile) and various flat tiles made to resemble slate or cedar shakes; it is used extensively in the Mediterranean countries.
There are also many products made from cement and aggregates that substitute for, and generally perform the same functions as, the structural clay products listed above. These nonclay brick and tile products are described briefly at the end of the article. The main subject of this article, however, is the brick and tile produced from fireclay.
Fireclay brick and tile are two of the most important products within the field of industrial ceramics. For background information on the nature of ceramic materials, see the articles presented in , particularly the articles on traditional ceramics. For lengthy treatment of the principal application of fireclay brick and tile, see the article building construction.
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History of brickmaking
Mud brick, dried in the sun, was one of the first building materials. It is conceivable that on the Nile, Euphrates, or Tigris rivers, following floods, the deposited mud or silt cracked and formed cakes that could be shaped into crude building units to build huts for protection from the weather. In the ancient city of Ur, in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), the first true arch of sun-baked brick was made about 4000 bc. The arch itself has not survived, but a description of it includes the first known reference to mortars other than mud. A bitumen slime was used to bind the bricks together.
Burned brick, no doubt, had already been produced simply by containing a fire with mud bricks. In Ur the potters discovered the principle of the closed kiln, in which heat could be controlled. The ziggurat at Ur is an example of early monumental brickwork perhaps built of sun-dried brick; the steps were replaced after 2,500 years (about 1500 bc) by burned brick.
As civilization spread eastward and westward from the Middle East, so did the manufacture and use of brick. The Great Wall of China (210 bc) was built of both burned and sun-dried bricks. Early examples of brickwork in Rome were the reconstruction of the Pantheon (ad 123) with an unprecedented brick and concrete dome, 43 metres (142 feet) in diameter and height, and the Baths of Hadrian, where pillars of terra-cotta were used to support floors heated by roaring fires.
Enameling, or glazing, of brick and tile was known to the Babylonians and Assyrians as early as 600 bc, again stemming from the potter’s art. The great mosques of Jerusalem (Dome of the Rock), Isfahan (in Iran), and Tehrān are excellent examples of glazed tile used as mosaics. Some of the blues found in these glazes cannot be reproduced by present manufacturing processes.
Western Europe probably exploited brick as a building and architectural unit more than any other area in the world. It was particularly important in combating the disastrous fires that chronically affected medieval cities. After the Great Fire of 1666, London changed from being a city of wood and became one of brick, solely to gain protection from fire.
Bricks and brick construction were taken to the New World by the earliest European settlers. The Coptic descendants of the ancient Egyptians on the upper Nile River called their technique of making mud brick tōbe. The Arabs transmitted the name to the Spaniards, who, in turn, brought the art of adobe brickmaking to the southern portion of North America. In the north the Dutch West India Company built the first brick building on Manhattan Island in 1633.