ASTM International Releases New Standard for Laminated Glass Products

A new ASTM International standard presents a set of criteria that can be used to evaluate laminated glass products for durability against radiation and weathering. ASTM’s glass and glass products committee, C14, developed the standard, which will soon be published as C1900.

“The new standard outlines both natural exposure and accelerated environments to achieve performance results,” says Julia Schimmelpenningh, ASTM International member and global applications manager, Eastman Chemical Co. “This standard is needed to allow reference and unification in the testing and evaluation of laminated glass to ensure that equitable comparisons can be made that affect durability, performance, and, in some cases, life safety.” 

The standard will provide manufacturers throughout the glass industry value chain with the opportunity to select components that best fit their needs and desired levels of performance, say officials. Regulatory bodies will be able to specify the standard to set a minimum performance level for durability based on the results of weathering tests.

In addition, the new standard will provide consumers with attributes they can quantify and use to make intelligent selections. Finally, laboratories will have proper guidance from the standard that will ensure that tests will be run according to parameters set forth by experts instead of having to run tests that vary by product or manufacturers’ desires.

“The practice found in this document stems from weathering requirements that were set forth in ANSI Z97.1,” says Schimmelpenningh. “As these requirements get more complex, the committee decided to bring this section of the safety glazing standard to the ASTM community where many experts in weathering congregated and developed standards. Although the current requirements have been partially referenced for over 40 years, this is the first time they are put into an easily referenceable document.”