Diagnostic Interpretation of Glass Failure

The prevalent use of large glass panels and the increasing use of glass in areas traditionally reserved for other materials, such as floors, roofs and staircases, is imposing unprecedented loads on glass. The fracture of glass caused by these onerous service loads and by the increasingly severe threats could result in human injury or death and often triggers claims and litigation. However, despite the widespread and documented cases of glass failure, there is a paucity of quantitative techniques for interpreting the causes of failure in glass. This paper attempts to redress the issue by providing a historical compilation of the existing knowledge on quantitative and qualitative techniques that explain glass failure. The static and dynamic fracture mechanics from this review form the basis of an empirical method, presented in this paper, that relates the fragment size to the fracture stress. This paper also describes a glass failure case study that illustrates some of the practical difficulties of carrying out a forensic analysis of glass failure.