New Bio-inspired solutions for toughened architectural glass

玻璃在日常生活和工业中占有重要地位，但其固有的脆性仍然限制了其应用范围。我们最近开发了一种新颖的、生物启发的、低成本的方法来显著提高玻璃的韧性。3D激光雕刻机用于生成弱界面网络，在应力过大的情况下，裂缝被引导成其传播更困难的配置。我们最初的工作集中在单轴拉伸载荷和薄（150微米）玻璃样品的I型断裂。我们建议探索、优化和测试新型3D雕刻图案，以提高用于窗户和建筑玻璃的厚（5毫米）玻璃片的性能。对于这些应用，我们将专注于提高玻璃对弯曲应力，冲击和热冲击的抵抗力，同时保持可接受的光学清晰度和长期稳定性。特别是，我们的雕刻方法将增加高温应用中使用的易碎玻璃陶瓷的抗冲击性，并且不能回火。我们还将使用雕刻来提高厚钠钙玻璃的性能，以增加抗冲击和抗热冲击的能力，为某些应用提供钢化玻璃和玻璃陶瓷的有趣且高成本效益的替代品。加拿大有几家玻璃制造商，该项目开发的新玻璃具有很大的经济潜力。例如，用于防火窗、烤箱、加热灯或工业炉的高温陶瓷玻璃在北美是一个价值7亿美元的市场。在这项工作中开发的一些新型高温钢化玻璃代表了一种在市场上没有竞争对手的新型玻璃。

Glass is prominent in everyday life and in industry, but its inherent brittleness still limits the range of its applications. We have recently developed a novel, bio-inspired and low-cost approach to significantly increase the toughness of glass. A 3D laser engraver is used to generate networks of weak interfaces and in case of excessive stresses the cracks are channelled into configurations where their propagation is more difficult. Our initial work focused on uniaxial tensile loading and mode I fracture on thin (150 microns) glass samples. We propose to explore, optimize and test new types of 3D engraved patterns to improve the performance of thick (5 mm) glass sheets used in windows and architectural glass. For these applications we will focus on improving the resistance of glass to flexural stresses, impacts and thermal shocks, while preserving an acceptable optical clarity and long-term stability. In particular, our engraving method will increase the resistance to impact of fragile glass-ceramics used in high-temperature applications, and which cannot be tempered. We will also use engraving to increase the performance of thick soda-lime glass to increase resistance to impact and resistance to thermal shocks, providing an interesting and highly cost effective alternative to tempered glass and to glass-ceramics for some applications. There are several fabricators of glass in Canada, and the new glasses developed in this project have a large economic potential. For example high-temperature ceramic-glass used for fireproof windows, ovens, heating lamps or industrial furnaces is a $700 million market in North America. Some of the new high-temperature toughened glasses developed in this work represent a new type of glass which would have no competition on this market.