Architectural Glass

Tempered glass (also known as toughened glass), is a kind of safety glazing materials processed by uniform heat treatment, so as to enhance its mechanical property and impact strength. Tempering puts the outer surfaces into compression and the interior into tension. Such stresses cause the glass, when broken, to shatter into small granular chunks instead of splintering into jagged shards as ordinary annealed glass does. The granular chunks are less likely to cause injury.

Laminated glass is a kind of safety glazing materials consisting of two or more sheets of glass permanently bonded together by one or more sheets of interlayer(s). The interlayers include PVB interlayer, EVA interlayer and Ionoplast (ionomer-based) interlayers.

Heat soaking glass can reduce spontaneous breakage due to stone inclusions. Typically heat soaked glass processing elevates the glass temperature to 550ºF (290ºC) for two hours. The obvious objective of the heat soak process is to achieve a “break now, not later” result, based on the assumption that any glass panels with inclusions will break during the heat soak process.

Most agree that heat soaking can eliminate (by destruction) some of the problem panels, but not that heat soaking will guarantee 100% elimination of potential spontaneous breakage due to inclusions.