International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

Clay is a specific soil type that composed with relatively finer particles usually less than 0.002mm according to most of standard definitions including the behaviours of cohesive and the clay particles may have different sizes less than 0.002mm and most of occasions the clay bulk is contaminated with some more coarse particles such as sand and silt even though those particles are comprised in a same deposit or a same massive body. Most of clay varieties are frequently condign in the advanced technological uses. Therefore, the investigation of the particle sizes of some of clay and categorization are important tasks in the selection of a clay type for some particular technological application. The well known methods for the grain size analysis are the wet sieve analysis and dry sieve analysis in order for cohesive soils and non-cohesive soils as usual. In the existing study, there were anticipated to compare the accuracy of dry sieve analysis results with the wet sieve analysis results of three different selected clay verities in Sri Lanka. As the experiential works those clay samples were separately analyzed using a sieve range of 2mm- 0.037mm and pan (<0.037mm) using dry sieve method. Also those clay types were wet sieve analyzed with respect to the sieve size of 0.075mm. According to dry sieve analysis results the finer portions (<0.075mm) were obtained as ~17%, ~6% and ~16% from clay 1, clay 2 and clay 3. The results of wet sieve analysis showed ~60%, ~37% and ~72% of finer portions (<0.075mm) in clay 1, clay 2 and clay 3 while the average grain sizes (D50) of them were 0.25mm, 0.27mm and 0.19mm. When comparing of those results the minimum deviation between wet sieve analysis result and dry sieve analysis result was found from clay 2 which is having maximum average grain size (D50) while the maximum deviation was observing from clay 3 which is having minimum average grain size (D50).

Brick clay is a well known type of clay which is available at various locations in world and the name was realized because of the constantly usages in the industry of brick manufacturing that based on the condign characteristic with the necessitate features for the bricks. The investigations of the fundamental and advanced physic-chemical characteristics of a type of Sri Lankan brick clay and bespeaking of the more advanced industrial uses of such clays are the ultimate realities of the existing study. The collected clay samples from a particular location were fundamentally characterized by testing the natural moisture content, grain size distribution, acidity of raw clay samples and the water absorption, bulk density, porosity and mechanical strengths of prepared bricks under 8000C using such clay In addition that those clay samples were characterized using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrophotometer, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrophotometer and X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectrophotometer. As the retributions of those analyses, mainly observed 6.57 of PH, uniformly graded grain size distribution, 37.36% clay and silt portion according to the weight and 21.45% natural moisture content from raw clay samples and 19.88% water absorption, 3.15 gcm-3of bulk density, 62.70% of porosity, 17.25MPa compressive strength, 0.31MPa splitting tensile strength from prepared bricks. The compositional analysis results showed 84% of Fe content with trace amounts of Ti, Ba and Ca, presence of calcite, quartz and more Fe minerals while lacking of any hazardous elements or compounds such as the heavy metals. By considering the characters of brick clay, it is possible to recommend this clay for the applications of water treatments, ceramic manufacturing, refractory material and sorption (adsorber) material for removal of metals.