Effect of Specimen Size on the Resistance to Thermal Shock of Refractory Castables Containing Eutectic Aggregates

Thermal shock is one of the most severe conditions to which a refractory lining can be subjected to during its industrial application. Thus, there are several methods available for testing thermal shock damage resistance of refractories. Among them, a very common method is the quench test, which consists of quenching a hot refractory bar into water. After that a retained mechanical property is determined. Considering this, the aim of the work herein is to compare the thermal shock damage resistance between two specimen sizes among several materials. The dimensions 150 mm x 25 mm x 25 mm and 160 mm x 40 mm x 40 mm were used. The small bars are generally used for mechanical characterization in the refractory field (recommended by ASTM C1171-05). The large bars, on the other hand, are a requirement of DIN 196-1, which regards procedures for testing cement materials. Experimental results have indicated that the thermal shock damage is bigger for the large bars, as predicted by theoretical aspects. Although the size difference between the specimens was not so big, it was possible to observe the size effect using a statistical treatment. Five different castable formulations, of which three contained eutectic aggregates, were tested. The highest variation found in thermal shock damage resistance because of the size was about 15%.