Laminated Glass
Laminated glass is most known for its applications in the auto industry. Used in many industries as safety glass, laminated glass serves a variety of safety purposes due to its ability to cohere together even after it has been shattered. The lamination process also improves properties of strength, tensility and impact resistance, making laminated glass ideal for consumer applications such as cutting boards and shower doors as well as high impact applications in car windshields, jewelry store windows, banks, airports, office buildings, security buildings and architectural glass. Laminated glass takes ten times longer to break through than regular glass, and in many situations is impossible to break through without extreme force or specialized cutting tools. This makes laminated glass a great security protectant against would-be robbers and as well as natural or man-made disasters such as earthquakes, tornadoes or terrorist attacks. Laminated glass also provides UV protection, an added benefit for museums, office buildings and cars. Bullet-proof glass is fabricated from multiple layers of laminated glass up to 100mm thick.
Referred to within the industry as a "glass sandwich", laminated glass is a treated composite of layers of float glass and polyvinyl butyral (PVB) film. A thin, flexible film of PVB is layered between at least two sheets of annealed glass and in some cases is layered on one or both exterior sides as well. The layers are sealed by pressurized rollers and heat then placed in a pressurized oil bath, chemically bonding the vinyl layer to the glass. The lamination process causes the glass to have 10 times the strength of an ordinary pane of glass, making it both possible and safe for glass to be used in jarring, high-impact applications like automobiles. Even after a sheet of laminated glass has chipped, punctured or broken, it remains intact without shattering due to its inner PVB layer holding it together. Laminated glass is generally more impact resistant than tempered safety glass, which has been heat tempered for increased strength but not chemically bonded with a polymer. Tempered glass is strong enough to be used in side windows and rear car windows and breaks into small, rounded pieces rather than shattering, while laminated glass is used for front windshields where the most impact resistance and safety are required.