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An Easy Way for Ceramic Bricks Elaboration to Carry out Basic Technical Measurements

Fired bricks have shown tremendous potential as a construction material due to their properties. However, their use required some specifications in terms of quality, resistance, and durability. In developing countries, the lack of tools to make test specimens leads to many defects in these brick specimens responsible for low durability and weak precision during mechanical tests and shrinkage. In this study, a simple and traditional method of making test bricks is presented. This simple method allows the production of bricks with the required properties. This method is especially efficient for semi-soft consistency pastes. The elaborated handmade pastes present a very different particle-size distribution < 2 mm (clay: 18-66%; silt: 12-53%; sand: 5-65%). The pastes do not stick to the walls of the mould like in the case of steel moulds, and it gives specimens with standard shape, smooth surface, and sharp edges. The resulting fired bricks exhibit high mechanical strength (up to 102 MPa for the compressive strength, and up to 28 MPa for the flexural strength) comparable to and even better than those of conventional methods. The elaborated bricks allowed also the measurement of very important parameters such as drying and firing shrinkage, drying, and firing weight loss, and porosity.