Mechanical behavior of laminated glass exposed to blast loading

Abstract

For laminated glass, the adherent properties of an interlayer reduce the risk of airborne glass splinters in case of blast loading. In this thesis, experimental and numerical studies were performed to investigate the mechanical properties of laminated glass exposed to blast loading. The experimental part consisted of five different experiments. Bend and tensions experiments were performed to investigate mechanical properties of glass, interlayer, and laminated components under quasi-static loading. While a compressed gas gun and free field explosions were used to study the behavior of pure and laminated glass under dynamic pressure loading.For the numerical study, finite element models were built to predict the response of the experimental tests. Stochastic initial damage distribution and node splitting was defined for the glass material. In the blast model, node splitting was also introduced in the interlayer to enable plastic deformation. Delamination between glass and interlayer was seen in quasi-static experiments, but could not be detected in dynamically loaded panes. For the case of 3-point bend loading of laminated glass, good correlation was found between numerical predictions and experimental observations. Enabling plastic deformation of the interlayer seems to be vital to predict a reasonable response of laminated glass under blast loading. Keywords: Laminated glass, Blast loading, Node splitting, Stochastic initial damage.