Glass Breakage of Curtain Wall System

Glass curtain wall is regarded one distinctive style of the modern building designs in architecture nowadays. For the modern building construction, when glass curtain walls replace masonry construction in commercial buildings, the depth and reach of light penetration have been greatly improved, reducing the need for artificial lighting and consequently, cutting down on lighting bills. However, some glass curtain walls with unreasonable design, material selection and construction have received wide attention from all walks of life due to problems such as glass breakage, glass fall, and water leakage.

In practical applications, due to various unreasonable applications, glass curtain wall has many problems, such as high self-explosion rate of tempered glass, failure of structural adhesive, poor fireproof performance of curtain wall systems, failure of glass curtain wall support structure, failure of glass curtain wall fixture, etc. Today, we would like to talk about two major factors to cause glass breakage in use as follows:
First, the glass burst caused by the impurity nickel sulfide, which is an inevitable harmful impurity in the production process of glass. Nickel sulfide itself does not cause any damage to the glass. However, when the curtain wall glass containing nickel sulfide is installed on the curtain wall facade, the volume of nickel sulfide is generated due to the increase of external temperature. Minor changes cause tiny cracks in the interior of the glass. These cracks pass through the tempered glass tension and release the internal energy, causing the glass to break.
Second, thermal stress is considered another important cause of glass curtain wall breakage. There are many factors to cause the heating of the curtain wall panel, but the most important heat source is sunlight. When the sunlight shines on the surface of the glass curtain wall, the glass will be thermally expanded. If the glass is evenly heated, the glass edge and the central portion of the glass will expand evenly at the same time, but if the glass is unevenly heated, the tensile stress is generated inside the glass. When there are cracks or micro cracks in the edge of the glass, these defects are easily affected by thermal stress. As the temperature difference increases, the thermal stress causes the crack to a gradual increase so as to eventually lead to glass breakage.

Dong Peng Bo Da Steel Pipe Group is a famous steel pipe manufacturer in China. We are committed to producing various types of steel products for your choice in your building project in future. Our products are all designed for the fast and easy installation of curtain walls. Contact us if you have any need in your project.