Using the right glass for your glass curtain wall

In certain occasion, when people are passing by a curtain wall building, the cracking of the glass may cause the glass fragments to fall off and hurt people. What’s worse, it may even cause the whole glass to fall off and hurt people. Apart from that, the unreasonable reflection of sunlight, especially the reflection of strong light by high reflective glass is also one of the unsafe factors. Due to the shedding of the glass, and sometimes the detachment of the entire curtain wall, the main reason of the accident is the improper use of the glass or the improper installation of the glass. Major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are developing safety regulations to regulate the use of glass curtain walls in applications theses years. How to look at glass bursting and falling off in curtain wall systems? The main reason for the glass to burst and fall off is improper glass selection or glass installation of glass curtain wall systems at first. As we all know, the glass is fragile. There are many micro-cracks on the surface of the glass, which causes the strength of the glass to be much lower than its theoretical strength. It is easy to cause the glass to burst when it is used. And the glass exposes the sharp edge at the broken edge. Or sharp corners are also very easy to cause harm to people. Plus, glass curtain walls are generally installed in more exposed parts, easy to make certain breakage in the long run. In addition to the effect of artificial external force, the explosion of glass has the following aspects: First, the thermal cracking of glass, especially the heat-absorbing glass and heat-reflecting glass form an uneven temperature field on the surface of the glass when exposed to sunlight. In particular, when the thermal stress exceeds the allowable range of the strength of the glass, it tends to cause glass bursting over time. Second, once the wind pressure, especially the force of the wind pressure exceeds the allowable limit of the glass strength, it is much likely for curtain wall structures to burst. Third, the glass is installed with large stresses, which is very easy to cause bursts over time. Fourth, the glass is damaged or cracked before or during installation. Lastly, it breaks or bursts under the influence of other factors such as earthquakes, ice and snow. The cracked glass may fall off and become an unsafe factor. Measures to Improve Glass Safety in Curtain wall System Based on what has been discussed in detail, the most effective measure to ensure glass safety is to prevent glass from bursting, falling off as well as light pollution from the glass. As a rule, to prevent glass from cracking, consider the following aspects: 1.    Reasonably choose the glass size. The larger the glass size, the easier it is to burst over time. 2.    Try to use heat treated glass, tempered glass and heat strengthened glass. The strength of tempered glass is 3-5 times that of normal clear float glass, which can effectively resist the impact of wind and snow load and foreign objects, but there is a problem of self-explosion of tempered glass. Although the strength of the heat strengthened glass is only about half of that of the tempered glass, there’s no self-explosion possibility. 3.    When the heat absorbing glass and the reflective glass are used in the curtain wall systems facing the sun, the original piece of the glass is preferably heat treated, because the glass in this part is very susceptible to thermal cracking. 4. Using polished glass. 5. Do not leave assembly stress on the glass when installing the glass. Construction should be according to relevant specifications, to minimize glass deformation.