EVALUATION OF TENSILE STRENGTH OF GLASS FROM COMBINED EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF LAMINATED GLASS

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the evaluation of tensile strength of annealed and heat-strengthened glass from a given set of samples. The values of tensile stresses at failure corresponding to the strengths of samples are determined from experimentally measured strains and also computed numerically using the known value of the critical load and loading scenario only. In contrast to common testing procedures performed on monolithic glass samples, laminated glass specimens are analyzed in our study to account for a potential impact of the process of fabrication. The data sets from two types of experiments are examined. In particular, the measured response from four-point bending tests is complemented with that for simply-supported laminated glass samples loaded in bending by a uniformly distributed pressure. The experimentally measured data are compared with those derived numerically to support the proposed computational model. In this regard, the results of small scale testing needed in calibrating the constitutive model of the polymer interlayer are also discussed in connection to ethylen-vinyl acetate and polyvinyl butyral foils.