Comparative evaluation of novel thermo-chemical treatment methods for improved impact performance of laminated glass

摘要： The thermal and chemical treatment used for glass is not applicable for the laminated glass due to the presence of interlayer having lower melting temperature than the minimum required temperature for the conventional treatment of glass. The present work reports four specialized treatment methods for laminated glass treatment. The effectiveness of the four novel laminated glass treatment methods is evaluated for an impact response of laminated glass. The destructive ball drop testing was performed following EN 356 on laminated glass samples after treating them with each of the four treatment methods. The treatment methods are compared based on the fracture pattern (correlated to the post-fracture response), fragment size, and amount of damage due to the impact by 2.3 kg, 83 mm diameter smooth solid steel ball from the height of 5 m. A multi-purpose algorithm (transient analysis in ANSYS 14.5 (explicit dynamics module)) was utilized for the determination of the maximum deformation and maximum equivalent stress. The regression analysis is conducted for the validation of experimental results. The impact behavior of thermo-chemically treated laminated glass samples was found to be significantly better than the untreated laminated glass samples in the most cases as the impurities/defects were reduced and strength of the laminated glass samples was increased by the treatment. These treatment methods can be customized later for the laminated glass structures and windshields during operating conditions, which would be a significant contribution to this field.