| ABOUT
GLASS
Glass as a material, has been used in buildings for
at least 2000 years, although its universal use in buildings only
occurred once reasonably sophisticated processes for large scale
production were introduced in the 19th Century.
A major development in the 1960's saw the introduction
of a continuous process for manufacture of glass, invented by
Pilkington Brothers of Saint Helens, England, which revolutionised
the manufacture of flat glass worldwide. Almost all glass is now
made with this "float glass" process, in which raw material
are fed into one end of high temperature furnace, in which they
melt and eventually flow out as molten glass onto a bed of molten
tin at the other end of the furnace. Glass is made in clear,
bronze, grey, blue and green shades, with the colours being achieved
by the addition of metal oxides to the molten material mix; a
few factories also produce amber and pink shades. Glass is also
to improve the performance characteristics of the pane. Using
a different manufacturing process, glass can be embossed, whilst
still hot enough to be plastic, with a very wide variety of patterns
either as decoration or in order to obscure vision through the
pane.
Glass is a brittle material which is not suitable
for locations where there is a danger of human impact causing
breakage and injury. In those locations safety glass should be
used, either thermally toughened, which increases the resistance
to impact by about a factor of 5, making the glass virtually unbreakable
by human impact, or laminated, in which case two panes of glass
are permanently bonded together with a transparent high strength
plastic interlayer. Laminated glass can break under impact but
does many instances - leading to excessive heat build up within
a room or the significant loss of heat in winter. Solutions to
minimise heat transfer, such as specially coated glass or glass
panes bonded into insulated glass units can be used when necessary.
Your local glass merchant can offer informed technical advice
on option to improve window performance characteristics.
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