Relationship between Young's modulus and temperature in porcelain tiles

A focused research was conducted on samples prepared from an industrial porcelain tile composition containing quartz, used to produce ceramic floor tiles, with the aim of evaluating the variation of fired specimens’ Young's modulus with temperature. These samples were fired in controlled laboratory conditions so that specimens with pre-existing cracks were obtained and subject to non-destructive in situ thermo-mechanical measurements (impulse excitation technique) in the 22–700 °C temperature range during heating and cooling processes in order to find evidences to explain the hysteresis phenomenon in the Young's modulus versus temperature curve. The observed irreversible Young's modulus may be directly related to the pre-existent cracks that on heating and cooling are closed and opened up respectively, changing thus the Young's modulus which is well characterized by a hysteresis cycle.