Lecture1 PDF
Lecture1 PDF
Lecture1 PDF
manufactured by meshing steel wire into molten glass by rolling process. It is used for making
low cost fire resistant glass which automatically breaks at high temperatures.
Glass structure
Glass is an amorphous or non-crystalline solid that is brittle in nature and the structure is
obtained by melt-quenching process. The glass structure (Figure 1(b)) is also obtained by using
sol-gel and vapor deposition technique. Glass is weak in tension because of its non-crystalline
molecular structure. When load is applied beyond the strength limit, glass breaks without any
prior warning, unlike steel and aluminium where plastic deformation occurs. Therefore, the
atomic structure of the glass is different from the structure of the crystalline materials (Figure
1(a).
(c)
(b)
(a)
Oxygen atom
Silicon atom
Sodium atom
Figure 1. Two-dimensional demonstration of: (a) crystalline structure of silica; (b) amorphous
structure of silica glass; (c) soda silica glass.
The main constituent of glass is silica sand. Almost, all glass contains at least 50% silica. The
structure of the glass is formed by bonding silicon and oxygen ions. Network modifiers (or
intermediates) and network formers such as sodium (Figure 1(c)), may interrupt the continuity or
contribute to the network structure of glass.
There are two main differences between crystalline and amorphous solids; crystalline solids are
formed by repeating geometric arrangement of atoms whereas; amorphous solids have random
atomic arrangement. The second difference is their phase transformation behavior (Figure 2)
when they are heated. For example, the transformation phases of crystalline and amorphous
solids can be understand by examining silica (SiO2) which can exist in either state. When silica is
in crystal form and is heated at a temperature Tm (freezing or melting point), it becomes liquid. It
is observed that at melting point the specific volume of crystalline solids changes abruptly which
causes sharp changes in physical properties. Whereas the amorphous structure of silica softens
gradually (start softening at temperature Tg) when those are heated because there is a wide
temperature range between the solid and liquid state. The temperature Tg is the glass transition
temperature of the solids.
A
Softening
Sp
eci
fic
vol
um
e
Stable liquid
Super-cooled liquid
Amorphous solid
Melting
C
F
D
Crystal
Tg
Tm
Temperature
of glass are low thermal conductivity, high dielectric strength, resistance to corrosion on attack
by water and acid.
Steel
Str
ess
Gl
ass
Strain
Figure 3. Stress versus strain diagram of steel and glass.