V-TEMP at a Glance
Along with increased tendency of using glass in buildings, concerns about strength, safety and heat conduction properties of glass is heightened. Painted and coated glass, with aesthetic and energy control performances, motivate designers to use more glass, and with larger sizes, in their projects. This in turn, results in increasing the use of tempering and heat strengthening processes to satisfy mechanical requirements of a glass opposing stress, thermal shock and wind force
Properties
Tempering process does not change the color, clearness, chemical composition and light transmission of the glass. Also, other properties such as hardness, density, thermal expansion coefficient, glass transition point and electrical properties stay unchanged after tempering. Torsion and tensile strength and resistance against impact and thermal shocks are improved after this prosess. Thermal shock resistance of tempered glass is almost 3 times higher than annealed glass opposing up to 300°C temperature.
Tempering process varies the cracking pattern of glass into one called “spider web” pattern. This process causes the glass, when broken, to crumble into small granular chunks of the same size with low potential safety risk. The importance of thermally toughening (tempering) of glass becomes more evidence in case of a natural disaster such as earthquake or storm, since safety tempered glass decrease injuries and loss of lives risks. Lastly, mechanical strength of tempered glass can be as much as 5 times higher than annealed glass.V-Temp is the brand of Venus Glass tempered safety glass.
Applications
HS (Heat strengthened)
Processing of heat strengthened or semi-tempered glass is similar to tempered glass except that its cooling rate is lower than that of tempered glass. Properties of the semi-tempered glass are between annealed and fully tempered ones. For example its mechanical strength equals twice the strength of annealed glass and its breaking pattern is similar to annealed glass.
HS is used for normal windows or those who require strengthened glass but also when using a fully tempered glass is not a must.
