California glass expert has been involved with evaluation automobile windshields. One way car manufacturers can increase automobile mileage is to decrease weight. A part of this effort has been to reduce the weight of automobile windshields. This is done by reducing the thickness of the windshield. Upper left is a representative cross section of a […]
Safety Glass Expert Performs Tempered Glass Analysis
Glass failure analysis often requires understanding of safety glass. Normal window glass is in the annealed state. Therefore, it will break into large sharp shards that can injure a person who breaks through it. In order to reduce the probability of failure and the possibility of injury […]
Shaping Flat Glass
Glass expert describes the condition of the edges of windows, mirrors and other flat glass pieces. Almost all flat glass pieces are shaped from larger pieces using glass scribe and break techniques. Thus the edge of the part has two distinct sides. The photograph above is a microscopic picture of a the edge of an […]
Tempered Safety Glass
California glass failure expert discusses the safety aspects of tempered glass; Tempered glass is safer than standard (i.e. annealed) glass because “dices” into small pieces under certain failure modes. In reality, the overall glass failure is driven by residual stresses put into the glass by the tempering process. That is, tempered glass “destroys” itself. If […]
Glass Expert discusses Why Tempered Glass Is Safety Glass
Tempered glass is safety glass because it breaks into small cubes. The edges of these cubes are still sharp. They are not “rounded”. From a glass expert point of view, the safety aspect comes strictly from the small size, which is a function of the temper stress. If these pieces are interlocked, they can behave […]