Numerical and Experimental Investigation of the Heating Process of Glass Thermal Slumping

The glass thermal forming process provides a high volume, low cost approach to producing aspherical reflectors for x-ray optics. Thin glass sheets are shaped into mirror segments by replicating the mold shape at high temperature. Heating parameters in the glass thermal slumping process are crucial to improve surface quality of the formed glass. In this research, the heating process of a thermal slumping glass sheet on a concave parabolic mold was simulated with the finite-element method (FEM) to investigate the effects of heating rate and soaking temperature. Based on the optimized heating conditions, glass samples 0.5 mm thick were formed in a furnace with a steel concave parabolic mold. The figure errors of the formed glass were measured and discussed in detail. It was found that the formed glass was not fully slumped at the edges, and should be trimmed to achieve better surface deviation. The root-mean-square (RMS) deviation and peak-valley (PV) deviation between formed glass and mold along the axial direction were 2.3 μm and 4.7 μm respectively.