Indian-American developing lighter, blast-proof glass

Washington, Sep 11 (IANS) An Indian-American researcher is developing a futuristic glass that will be thinner, lighter and less vulnerable to terrorist attacks and small-scale explosions.

'Currently, blast-resistant window glass is more than one inch thick, which is much thicker than standard window glass,' said Sanjeev Khanna, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the Missouri University-Columbia (MU-C) College of Engineering.

'The glass we are developing is less than half an inch thick. Because the glass panel will be thinner, it will use less material and be cheaper than what is currently being used,' Khanna added.

Khanna did his M.Sc. and B.Sc. from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur and was a design engineer with Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) for four years.

Conventional blast-resistant glass is made with laminated glass that has a plastic layer between two sheets of glass.

MU-C researchers are now replacing the plastic layer with a transparent composite material made of glass fibres that are embedded in plastic.

The glass fibres add strength because, unlike plastic, they are only about half the thickness of a human hair, and leave little room for defects in the glass that could lead to cracking.

The use of a transparent composite interlayer provides the flexibility to change the strength of the layer by changing the glass fibre quantity and its orientation, Khanna said.

In tests, researchers are observing how the glass reacts to small-scale explosions caused by a grenade or hand-delivered bomb.

They tested the glass by exploding a small bomb near the window panel. After the blast, the glass panel was cracked but had no holes in the composite layer, says a MU-C release.

'The new multi-layered transparent glass could have a wide range of potential uses if it can be made strong enough to resist small-scale explosions,' Khanna said.

'The super-strong glass also may protect residential windows from hurricane winds and debris or earthquakes. Most hurricane damage occurs when windows are punctured, which allows for high-speed wind and water to enter the structure.'

indianachu - 14