Experimental Investigation on the Impact Resistance of Laminated Glass with Various Glass Make-ups

Abstract

Laboratory testing data concerning the full sized laminated glass panel with different glass make-ups under impact is limited. An experimental investigation on the impact resistance of LG panels under hard body impact is reported in this paper. A test approach namely, mean minimum breakage velocity approach, is adopted to capture the minimum impact energy that triggers each glass breakage. The crack morphology of glass panels is firstly investigated. Results indicate that the intersection angle of the radial crack edges increases when the strengthening level of glass decreases. The impact resistance is then revealed by investigating the effects caused by three design variables, i.e., the glass types, interlayer thickness and interlayer types. It reveals that the configuration with inner HS glass and outer FT glass panel can provide better impact resistance, and performs better in keeping initial stiffness under repeated impacts with higher impact velocity. In the contrast, placing HS glass in the both side may weaken the impact resistance. A 1.52 mm PVB interlayer can provide better impact resistance and higher initial stiffness when compared to a thicker interlayer, it is more likely to produce stiffness degradation between consecutive breakages as well. The difference of SGP LG and PVB LG in MMBV is found to be negligible, however, SGP LG exhibits evidently higher initial pre breakage stiffness and remains greater post breakage strength.