A brick is a block or a single unit of a ceramic material used in a masonry construction. Typically the bricks are stacked together or put like brick work using various types of mortar to hold the bricks together and make a permanent structure. In the world Asia produces 87% of the total production of the bricks. On the other hand, India and China are the main consuming countries of the bricks. Bricks are typically produced in common or standard sizes in bulk quantities. They have been considered as one of the most durable and strongest building materials used in the twentieth century. Brick manufacturing produces noxious gases which results in substantial air pollution. As in India it produces over 60 billion clay bricks annually, resulting in a strong impact on soil erosion and unprocessed emissions. The use of traditional brick-firing technologies resulted in significant local air pollution. The standard brick size provided by IS: 2212 (1991) is (19cm × 9cm × 9cm). The bricks are placed in horizontal courses, sometimes dry and sometimes wet.
In some cases adobe, the brick simply dries. More generally it is thrown in an oven of some sort to make a true pottery. Clay bricks are used in a wide range of buildings from housing to factories, and in the construction of tunnels, waterways, bridges, etc. Their properties vary according to the purpose for which they are intended, but clays have provided the Basic building material for centuries. The main ingredients of bricks are clay, lime, magnesia, silica, alumina, iron oxide. Therefore, the brick is produced on a larger scale where these ingredients are readily available. Brick production graph declines continuously from the last five decades in India because importing the above ingredients from the outside which will result in higher production cost. In order to meet the growing demand for energy-efficient building construction materials, it is necessary to adopt cost-effective and environmentally appropriate technologies and to update traditional techniques with available local materials.
This tendency attracts the researcher to find the probable solution of this problem with the use of different materials such as fly ash, black cotton soil, concrete blocks, agro residues, etc. Very few investigations are made of brick made of black cotton soil in The world, soil is readily available in the Indian context. The black cotton soil is found in most of Maharashtra, M.P. West, Gujarat and Tamilnadu. The black cotton floor is readily available in India. The black cotton soil has a volumetric change with the change in moisture content, but provides good resistance with additives.