Effects of thermal-heating cycle treatment on thermal expansion behavior of different building stones

• The experiment takes three cycles between 30 °C and 80 °C within 48 h.
• The extent of damage basically depends on the orientation of the crystal texture.
• The main damage occurs in the first cycle of the measurement.
• It is nearly impossible to make a general statement on all measured stone types.

Several types of natural stone show dimensional instability causing damage if used outdoors. The extent of damage basically depends on the orientation of the crystal texture in the stone slabs, the so-called preferred orientation. In order to examine the characteristics of natural stone, the measurement was done with a quadruple-dilatometer. The dilatometer is a testing device for measuring the linear thermal expansion of materials as a function of temperature. Enabling the analysis, a quadruple-dilatometer was built which allows testing of four samples simultaneously under same conditions. Several types of marble (Wachauer marble), limestone (Mannersdorfer limestone, Mocca Creme, Schwarzenseer limestone and Veselje Unito), calcareous arenite (St. Margarethener calcareous arenite), quartz arenite (Sun Imperial) and granite (Neuhauser granite and Chinese granite G603) have been analyzed, to create an assemblage of the thermal expansion properties of several stone types.