Exploring Thin Glass Strength Test Methodologies

Abstract

Thin glass is currently widespread in mobile devices and has great potential for applications in buildings. However, presently there is no standard method to determine the strength of thin glass for building applications and there is little experimental data available on its mechanical behaviour. Hence, this paper presents experimental and numerical investigations developed with two main goals: (i) to assess and (eventually) adapt existing test setups in order to determine the strength of thin glass; and (ii) to characterize thin glass using those tests, focusing on the ultimate strength of the material. The experimental programme, which was executed at TU Delft, comprised destructive tests on chemically tempered thin glass (thickness of 2 mm). Two destructive tests were assessed and tentatively improved: the in-plane four-point bending test, which involved many difficulties related with geometrical and mechanical instabilities; and the buckling test, which provided a lower bound for the material strength, as failure was triggered in the supports (due to stress concentrations). Based on the results obtained, a new tension test was proposed and numerically investigated; the results obtained revealed many advantages over the former tests in terms of quality/consistency of results and possibility of standardization.