This is because when it breaks, it may form larger sharp shards that can cause serious injury. Although laminated glass is most commonly associated with windshield glass for automobiles, it is increasingly being specified for storefronts, curtain walls, and windows to meet codes for hurricane-resistant glass.Ī third option, heat-strengthened glass, is not technically a safety glazing.
Consequently, when tempered glass is broken, it shatters into thousands of tiny pebbles-this practically eliminates the danger of human injury caused by sharp edges and flying shards.Īnother type of safety glazing, laminated glass, is made by sandwiching an interlayer of vinyl (typically polyvinyl butyral ) between two layers of glass to hold the panel together if it is broken. In addition to making tempered glass four to five times stronger than conventional annealed glass, re-heating and rapid quenching dramatically changes the break characteristics of the glass. With an increase in spontaneous glass breakage incidents, the glazing industry is looking at new ways to make assemblies safer. The most common type of safety glass is tempered glass, which is made by heating pre-cut panels of glass to about 650 C (1200 F), then cooling them rapidly through a process called ‘quenching.’ By cooling the outer surfaces of the panel more quickly than the center, quenching puts the surfaces and edges of the glass in compression and the center of the glass in tension. Tempered, laminated, and heat-strengthened glass
In addition to balcony glass, safety glazings are commonly required for: The term ‘safety glazing’ generally refers to any type of glass engineered to reduce the potential for serious injury when it comes into human contact. While such episodes are rare, the danger they pose has forced building code writers, architects, government officials, and related industry professionals to reconsider which types of glass should be specified for glass applications where strength and protection of passers-by are paramount.įor architects and specifiers, it is important to have an overview on the potential causes of spontaneous glass breakage, including some common misconceptions about its actual spontaneity. The past few years have seen several highly publicized incidents involving window and balcony glass breaking spontaneously and falling from high-rise buildings in Toronto, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Austin, Texas.
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