Indian Granite Tiles - To Help You Through The Natural Life

By Author: Axiom Exports
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Granite is one of the most popular building materials. It has been used for thousands of years in both interior and exterior applications. Granite dimension stone is used in buildings, bridges, paving, monuments and many other exterior projects. Indoors, polished granite slabs and tiles are used in countertops, tile floors, stair treads and many other design elements. Granite is a prestige material, used in projects to produce impressions of elegance and quality. Some interesting uses of granite are shown below.

What is "Granite"?

The definition of "granite" varies. A geologist might define granite as a coarse-grained, quartz- and feldspar-bearing igneous rock that is made up entirely of crystals. However, in the dimension stone trade, the word "granite" is used for any feldspar-bearing rock with interlocking crystals that are large enough to be seen with the unaided eye. By this classification, rocks such as anorthosite, gneiss, granite, granodiorite, monzonite, syenite, gabbro and others are all sold under the trade name of "granite".

Granite Physical Properties

In terms of its physical properties ...
... granite is a unique material. These properties lending uniqueness to granite are:

Porosity/permeability
Granite has almost negligible porosity ranging between 0.2 to 4%.

Thermal Stability
Granite is highly stable thermally, therefore shows no changes with the change in temperature. Granite is impervious to weathering from temperature and even from the air borne chemicals. It is the high resistance to chemical erosion that makes granite useful for making tanks to store highly caustic material.

Co-efficient of expansion
The co-efficient of expansion for granite varies from 4.7x10-6 – 9.0x10-6(inch x inch).

Variegation
Granite shows consistency in colour and texture.

Hardness
It is the hardest building stone and hardness of granite that lends it excellent wear.

Granite Chemical Properties

Granite is primarily composed of feldspar, quartz along with various other minerals in varying percentage, which are stated as follows:

Nominal chemical composition of various oxides
Silica (SiO2) ---------------------- 70-77%
Alumina (Al2O3) ----------------- 11- 14%
Potassium Oxide (P2O5) --------- 3 – 5%
Soda (Na2O) ------------------------ 3 – 5%
Lime ----------------------------------- 1%
Iron (Fe2O3) -------------------------- 1-2%
Iron (FeO) ----------------------------- 1 – 3%
Magnesia (Mg0) ------------------------- .5 – 1%
Titina ---------------------------------- Less than 1 %(.38%)
Water (H2O) --------------------------- 0.03%

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