safety armored glass - recent development

Safety armored glass  – recent development!     

 A new product in the field of safety glass that has been developed based on the need to find an aesthetically adequate compensation for the implementation of the historic armored glass windows of listed buildings.     

   Armored glass was historically used as safety glass of the first generation. It is a flat rolled glass, into the mass of which there is pulled in the center a wire insert during its production. This ensures the glass after breaking the residual stability - the integrity of the glass and partially it prevents sharp shards to drop off. Whereas together with the wire insert there are brought into the glass mass a lot of defects, especially air bubbles, the glass has only one-third strength compared to regular float glass of equal thickness. Given that the original armored glass cannot meet today's safety requirements then upon implementation of horizontal glazing of buildings it is replaced with laminated safety glass, when a similar visual effect is achieved by embedded PVB printed film, thus imitating the original wire insert.

     The solution, which was, for the first time ever, launched by the company “Vitrex s.r.o.” in cooperation with an expert in building/ construction glass  - Mr. Sázovský, Ing. (Master of Engineering) – is functionally and aesthetically superior to existing procedures. Instead of imitation of wire inserts by embedding between 2 pieces of glass (one of them with patterned surface structures similar to armored glass) there is embedded real wire insert and the both pieces of glass are laminated together by the EVASAFE foil made by a Japanese manufacturer – “Bridgestone”. The EVASAFE film, in comparison with PVB foil, has a number of advantages. It is able to contain the inserted material and without optical defects it can close it in the glass.

     After lamination, in the film there is created a molecular 3D network structure, so called the cross-link. This is an irreversible process, which eliminates the process of delamination even at high temperatures. Thus laminated glass also has excellent moisture resistance and compared to the laminated glass with PVB film it does not get yellow. The wire insert here also fulfills an added safety feature without the adverse effects of deterioration of the glass quality.

    "Safety armored glass" has a huge potential, especially in reconstructions of historic buildings, but also for use in new buildings. It was first successfully used in the reconstruction of Masaryk’s railway station in Prague, where upon the selection of the reconstruction of window skylights in the arrival halls the crucial word had the conservationists. This new product has already passed, with excellent results, the whole process of testing and certification by IKATES s.r.o., the testing laboratory for glass used in building and constructions.