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This blog is meant to allow those interested in the strength of inorganic glasses and associated properties, to easily share their data, experimental set-ups, theories, etc. with the rest of the scientific community interested in this subject. Interested parties may also visit my web site:http://glass-fracture.org
A.A. Griffith
When (not if) we achieve strengths significantly higher than current, glass will become a substantially more valuable material, able to make even greater contributions to the benefit of society as well as to the environment. (Not to mention: to the profit of those making it!) Together, we can usher in: "The Age of Glass"!
ReplyDeleteMany years ago I had persuaded a number of people to shoot high and go for 25% of the theoretical strength as a practical commercial glass strength target. I've been in this game long enough to know that this is absurb and we should be going for more attainable objectives like the 3X to 5X over today's commercial demonstrated strengths.
ReplyDeleteExactly what my good friend Bulent Yoldas requested I do when I was preparing my paper for the 1st International Conference on Ceramics and Glass, which you Chuck, presented in the same session. I remember you referred to my approach as hoping to find a light switch that would magically provide the 50X strength improvement that I had been speaking. Well, I'm older and wiser, but 5X would really change the field of materials, particularly in the area of containers. And, I would suggest that moving GLASS contaners from barley able to survive to a profitable business woudl be a worthwhile objective.
Seems to me this emphasis on improving strength could be misleading. It is the fracture toughness of glass that needs to be significantly improved. Some new ideas for increasing the fracture toughness of glass are needed.
ReplyDelete'Fracture toughness' is the ability of a material containing a crack to resist fracture. On the other hand, the primary problem we face in attempting to increase the 'practical strength'of glass is to increase the load which causes cracks to nucleate rather than to propagate.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to add another view: Glass breaks as all brittle materials following a Weibull distribution. So a huge benefit would be to narrow the fractue distribution (esp. for Cont. Glass). This is done not by increasing the inert glass strength but by avoid strength-decreasing defects. So there are different ways to go.
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