Trace elements in clinker: II. Qualitative identification by fuzzy clustering

The trace element content of clinkers (and possibly of cements) can be used for the qualitative identification (i.e., manufacturing factory). This paper proposes a fuzzy classifier for the discrimination of clinkers produced in different factories based on their Mg, Sr, Ba, Mn, Ti, Zr, Zn and V content. The fuzzy classifier is identified by unsupervised fuzzy clustering. The most relevant trace elements were selected based on the obtained clusters by the modified version of the Fisher interclass separability method. The classification of a country from the European Community and South African clinkers is used as an illustrative example. The results show that the proposed method is useful to identify compact classifiers that are able to determine the origin of the clinker; the obtained classifier is easy to use and interpret for engineers and researchers, even when they are not familiar with the concept of fuzzy logic.