Glass strength/strengthening and flaws, indentation hardness and cracking (site sponsor, C.R.'Chuck' Kurkjian)

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Stresses in indented and scratched glasses
link to the Power Point presentation at GOMD 2008: /Documents/gomd bf short final modified3.pdf
 
On this page we will describe our work on the measurement of stresses induced in glasses due to indentation and scratching or by the application of an externally applied load.  
 
As-drawn, flat silica and soda-lime-silica glass fibers, i.e. 'perfect surfaces' (~300 microns) were indented with a diamond cone (Vickers-like, ~138 degrees) at 50 grams load.  The retardation/azimuth images were obtained with an   Abrio system (http://cri-inc.com/) in transmission by R. Oldenbourg at the Woods Hole Marine biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.
Figure 1.  Operation of the Abrio system
 
Figure 2.  Cone indent in glass
 
 
Figure 3.  Retardation and azimuth in soda-lime-silica glass perpendicular to the load direction.
Figure 4.  Retardation and azimuth in silica glass perpendicular to the load drection.
 
Figure 5.  Retardation in silica glass parallel to the load direction.
Figure 6.  Azimuth in silica glass parallel to the load direction.
 

 

From these images, it can be seen that there are substantial differences in the magnitude and distribution of the stress birefringence due to indentation in these two glasses ( as expected, see Arora et al. JNCS 31 415-428, 1979). This is also to be expected  based on the portions of  flow due to shear and compaction in the two glasses (see Yoshida et al, J. Mater. Res, 20 (12) 3404-3412, 2005), as well as earlier work of Peters, Hagan and others.  Detailed  calculation of the 3D stresses are in progress and will be presented soon.

 

It is clear that an understanding of such indentation processes is critical to the development of more robust glasses as well to the development  of appropriate scoring cracks  for the 'thermal cutting' of substrate glasses used for liquid crystal displays.   Such quantitative work has not been done to date.  The availability of the CRI Abrio system as well as the analyses of Prof. H. Aben and A. Errapart at the Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia (see 'links') have made this work possible.