Spalling

Defect visualisation

This head encompasses a wide range of defects in ceramic floor and wall tilings, which materialise in the form of shivering and conchoidal fractures that affect isolated tiles or extend across more or less wide surfaces. Observed from a short distance, they display the following variations:



Case 1

Spalling that only affects the glaze and in some cases also the engobe, of a shallow laminar form. This usually appears in tile cutting and drilling operations.

• Defect assignment

• Defect prevention

• Historical

Case 2

Deep and multiple laminar spalling, normally following a crack that runs across the entire tile surface

• Defect assignment
  

• Defect prevention

• Historical

The spalling that affects the ceramic body (biscuit + engobes + glazes) and which, in turn, presents a different appearance:

Case 3

With a conchoidal form and clean base, exhibiting a development like that illustrated, ranging from a small glaze shivering to the formation of a perimeter crack and subsequent loss of mass.

• Defect assignment
  

• Defect prevention

• Historical

Case 4

Of irregular geometry with radial and circular cracks, with a clean base that is the colour of the biscuit

• Defect assignment
  

• Defect prevention

• Historical

Case 5

With the presence of white salts, which usually also appear in the tile-to-tile joints

• Defect assignment
  

• Defect prevention

• Historical

Case 6

With white nodules on the base, appearing in isolated tiles

• Defect assignment

• Defect prevention

• Historical

Of all these types of manifestations, we particularly note case 2, especially associated with cracking with a polygonal trend in a ceramic flooring and, consequently, with a development over wide surfaces, as well as case 3, when it exhibits a development like that illustrated in the pictures, corresponding to particular areas of an exterior tiling, in geographic areas with frost risk.