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Experimental Variability in Kinetics of Moisture Expansion and Mass Gain in Ceramics
Author(s) -
Le Goff Maxime,
Gallet Yves
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of the american ceramic society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.9
H-Index - 196
eISSN - 1551-2916
pISSN - 0002-7820
DOI - 10.1111/jace.13336
Subject(s) - power law , exponent , ceramic , moisture , diffusion , brownian motion , power (physics) , thermodynamics , materials science , statistical physics , mineralogy , geology , mathematics , physics , composite material , statistics , philosophy , linguistics
The rehydroxylation dating method of archeological fired‐clay artifacts relies on the reliability of the (time) 1/4 power law model considered for long‐term moisture expansion and mass gain in ceramics. Here, we reanalyze different moisture expansion datasets that were previously used to verify this model. We show that these data obey an accurate (time) 1/ N power law, but they reveal a variability in the values of the exponent 1/ N between ~1/2 and ~1/4. It is possible that this value is an intrinsic property of ceramics, naturally varying between a behavior governed by a Brownian process ( t 1/2 power law) and a behavior controlled by a one‐dimensional diffusion process ( t 1/4 power law).