STRESS RELAXATION AND RELIABILITY EVALUATION OF SODA-LIME GLASS

Stress relaxation of glass is a dualism effect, it often lead to strength degradation in strengthened glass, but on the other hand, it improves the reliability and stressuniformity of glasses. In this work, stress relaxation of soda-lime glass was investigated using three-point bending tests at 400-560℃ which is near the brittle to ductile transition temperature, for enhancing the safety of glass productions and exploring the most economic anneal process. The experimental results show that the speed of stress relaxation increases but the ultimate stress decreases with increasing temperature. The stress uniformity of the glass samples before and after anneal was examined using spherical indentation at arranged testing points. It indicates that the scatter of the local strength measured by the Hertzian indentation is smaller in the anneal glass than in initial specimen, so that the estimated Weibull modulus for the anneal specimen is higher. Furthermore, the strength evaluation by Hertzian indentation and statistical analysis was presented.