Tempered glass is often used for shower doors. As a result, there have been numerous shower door failures. Often the glass failure analysis cannot be performed because of the large number of resulting pieces and the inability to locate the pieces associated with the origin. In this failure example tempered glass was used to construct the shower enclosure. The only evidence available to Read Consulting Failure Analysis was various photographs of the failure. Fortunately , because the failure origin is associated with a “butterfly pattern”, the origin was located. The defining photograph appears to show that the interior corner of the shower enclosure was in direct contact with a tile surface. The hard tile could damage the edge of the tempered glass. Additionally, there is a stress riser associated with the glass interior corner. Due to theses deficiencies, this is a poor design.
