Glass Strengthening via High-Intensity Plasma-Arc Heating

Abstract

The use of a high-intensity plasma-arc lamp was used to irradiate the surface of soda-lime silicate glass tiles to determine if an increase in strength could be achieved. The lamp had a power density of 3500 W/cm2, a processing area of 1 cm x 10 cm, irradiated near-infrared heating at a wavelength between 0.2 1.4 µm, and was controlled to unidirectionally sweep across 50-mm-square tiles at a constant speed of 8 mm/s. Ring-on-ring (RoR) equibiaxial flexure and 4 pt uni-directional flexure testings of entire tiles were used to measure and compare failure stress distributions of treated and untreated glass. Even with non-optimized processing conditions, RoR failure stress increased by approximately 25% and the 4 pt bend failure stress increased by approximately 65%. Strengthening was due to a fire-polishing-like mechanism. The arc-lamp heat-treatment caused the location of the strength-limiting flaws in the 4-pt-bend tiles to change; namely, failure initiation occurred on the gage section surface for the treated glass whereas it occurred at a gage section edge for the untreated. Arc-lamp heat-treatment is attractive not only because it provides strengthening, but because it can (non-contact) process large amounts of glass quickly and inexpensively, and is a process that either a glass manufacturer or end-user can readily employ.