Investigation on optimum salt content for singgora roof fabrication

Singgora roof is one of the valued property due to the history and national culture. One of the weakness of Singgora roof was the strength of the product. Objective of this study were to conduct an experimental worked that can help small industry of Singgora roof to overcome their problem. The quality of existing factory product was low due to the poor quality control in all stages of production. It was also found that by adding more salt or sodium chloride content into the raw material will increase the Singgora roof strength. Singgora roof fabrication need to through the mixing, moulding, drying and firing. Before mixing process, the clay was sieved using 425 µm siever. The same amount of clay were used for each samples with different salt content used. The salt content was varies (9.1 %, 16.7 %, 23.1 %, 28.6 % and 33.3 %) in order to investigate the effect on Singgora properties. After that, the drying process was done using oven at 105 °C for 24 hours. The last step was firing process. All the samples were fired at the same temperature and duration (1200 °C for 24 hours). The sample were characterized by X-Ray Fluorescent (XRF), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Modulus of Rupture (MOR), density and water absorption. For XRF, the results shows the highest element found were alumina and silica while the XRD showed highest peak on silica and alumina. The C5 samples with highest salt content which is 50 % shows the highest strength (72.066N/mm2).The density increase when more salt content added. For water absorption test, the result shows that percentage of water absorption increases with more water content used. As a conclusion, samples that has been added with salt can improve the Singgora properties.