Experimental and Numerical Study of Window Glass Breakage with Varying Shaded Widths under Thermal Loading

To investigate the effect of shaded width on the breaking behavior of window glass, a series of experiments was carried out on float glass with dimension of 600 mm x 600 mm x 6 mm in an enclosed compartment under radiant heat. The shaded width of glass pane ranged from 10 mm to 50 mm with an interval of 10 mm. Experimental results showed that crack patterns of the glass pane were influenced little by the shaded width, while the average value of the first breaking time of the glass pane decreased firstly and then increased with an increase in the shaded width. The average time to the first crack with the shaded width of 20 mm was shortest in experiments and the corresponding time was 572.5 s. In addition, the finite element method was also used to simulate the process of crack initiation and single crack propagation. Temperatures measured by thermocouples in experiments were employed as thermal loads for the problem of glass breakage. The first breaking time obtained by the program was in good agreement with experimental data.