ABSTRACT
The demand for high-quality ceramics is increasing in many elds. The applications are spreading to highly functional materials known as the “ne ceramics” as well as materials for house-ware and buildings. Although material science for ceramics has advanced signicantly during the last few decades, the production processes still rely on old methods. Particularly, R&D has not addressed the drying process, and drying is usually carried out slowly in order to avoid undesirable cracks and deformations. The reason is often attributed to the fact that ceramic drying involves maintaining a molded conguration. Although ceramics are sensitive to the surrounding atmosphere during drying, it is very difcult to predict the heat-and mass-transfer rates and the air ¤ow pattern in dryers with sufcient accuracy and generalize the results to the wide variety of ceramics. Many ceramic manufacturers are small companies, and they may not wish to invest much effort in ceramic drying R&D as drying occurs only at the pretreatment stage in ceramic production. However, drying is important for precisely designing the molding, determining the high-efcient heating rate in a dryer, and completing the drying so as to reduce the ratio of failure during sintering and yielding the qualied productions.
