WHITEWARE

any of a broad class of ceramic products that are white to off-white in appearance and frequently contain a significant vitreous, or glassy, component. Including products as diverse as fine china dinnerware, lavatory sinks and toilets, dental implants, and spark-plug insulators, whitewares all depend for their utility upon a relatively small set of properties: imperviousness to fluids, low conductivity of electricity, chemical inertness, and an ability to be formed into complex shapes. These properties are determined by the mixture of raw materials chosen for the products, as well as by the forming and firing processes employed in their manufacture. In this article the raw materials, properties, and applications of whiteware ceramics are reviewed. At certain points in the article there are references to specific industrial processes employed in the manufacture of whiteware products. For more detailed description of these processes, the reader is referred to the article on traditional ceramics. Additional reading A discussion of whitewares may be found in W. Ryan and C. Radford, Whitewares Production, Testing, and Quality Control: Including Materials, Body Formulations, and Manufacturing Processes (1987). A good introduction to ceramics in general is provided by David W. Richerson, Modern Ceramic Engineering: Properties, Processing, and Use in Design, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded (1992). The processing of traditional ceramics is described in F.H. Norton, Elements of Ceramics, 2nd ed. (1974); James S. Reed, Introduction to the Principles of Ceramic Processing (1988); George Y. Onoda, Jr., and Larry L. Hench, Ceramic Processing Before Firing (1978); and four sections of Theodore J. Reinhart (ed.), Engineered Materials Handbook, vol. 4, Ceramics and Glasses, ed. by Samuel J. Schneider (1991): Ceramic Powders and Processing, pp. 41122; Forming and Predensification, and Nontraditional Densification Processes, pp. 123241; Firing/Sintering: Densification, pp. 242312; and Final Shaping and Surface Finishing, pp. 313376. Thomas O. Mason