The Cold Crushing Strength (CCS) represents the ability of a product to resist failure under compressive load at room temperature. It has an indirect relevance to refractory performance, and is used as one of the indicators of abrasion resistance.
The higher the CCS of a material is the greater should be the resistance to abrasion. Refractories with high CCS are also expected to have higher resistance to slag attack.
The determination of cold crushing strength (CCS) is also highly important in case of refractory insulating bricks where bricks have to be porous as well as strong.
For the measurement of the CCS, according to EN 993-5, a steadily increasing compressive load is applied to the refractory sample by a compressive machine until the sample fails.
The EN993-5 Standard is issued in 1998 and is based on the PRE/R14 elaborated in 1967.