International Journal of Applied Glass Science最新文献

The glass industry is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions due to its energy consumption profile and the use of fossil fuels in the manufacturing process. Most of the energy to produce glass is consumed in the process of treating raw materials to elevated temperatures, usually above 1500°C. Glass manufacturing also generates significant environmental impacts, such as greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, water consumption, and waste generation. Therefore, improving the sustainability of glass manufacturing is a significant challenge for the industry and society. There are ways to reduce the energy consumption and emissions of glass melting, such as recycling glass, using oxy-fuel burners, improving furnace insulation and design, and adopting electric melting technologies. These methods can help save energy, lower costs, and enhance the sustainability and environmental footprint of the glass industry. However, the industry faces challenges and barriers, such as technical feasibility, economic viability, capital investment, and market acceptance. More research and development must be invested to improve the energy efficiency and environmental performance of glass melting. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the growth glass industry has made over the past 30 years and the remaining challenges for sustainable glass manufacturing with a focus on the fiberglass segment. Sharing of procedural methods, technical approaches, and results can help enable the global glass industry in our future sustainability challenges. The fiberglass segment included a broad technical view including glass chemistry development, product development, new industry codes and standards, melting development, computational fluid dynamic modeling, life cycle assessments, and sustainability goals linked to capital planning. The net result delivered a significant reduction in environmental emissions at the global enterprise scale. The implemented changes have taken decades, significant investments, and resources to plan and develop. Practices reviewed and implemented can help drive collaboration and commonality within the glass industry to achieve sustainability goals. Action is needed now if the glass industry is to meet global government demands of reducing carbon emissions by 55% by 2030 and zero carbon emissions by 2050 in alignment with the Paris Agreement on decarbonization.

Glass and glass ceramics are very functional materials, albeit their structural complexity. Their relevance ranges from fundamental science problems in the fields of physics, chemistry, and geoscience, to applications in health areas, engineering, or technological matters that require high performance. Enhancing our understanding of these materials' performance and refining sample preparation methods remains paramount in this field. Synchrotron facilities offer a suite of powerful techniques for the detailed characterization of glasses and glass ceramics. These methods provide valuable insights into their atomic and molecular structure, phase transformations, mechanical behavior, and thermal properties, ultimately contributing to the development of improved materials for a wide range of applications. In-depth investigations conducted under extreme conditions of pressure and temperature have yielded pivotal insights into densification mechanisms, phase transitions, crystallization kinetics, and their consequential macroscopic properties. The emergence of fourth-generation synchrotrons brings in a wave of novel experimental possibilities that may exert a profound influence on this field in the coming decade. In this study, we unveil a selection of the remarkable capabilities now accessible to researchers at the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Source—Sirius, within the realm of extreme methods of analysis (EMA) beamline for investigating vitreous systems under extreme conditions.

Contactless hot embossing has been demonstrated to possess the potential for cost-effective production and precise mounting concepts in fabricating glass microlenses and microlens arrays due to the reduced difficulty of mold fabrication and the possibility of obtaining self-aligned assemblies. This study aims to provide experimental evidence for understanding the forming mechanism of glass microlenses and microlens arrays in the contactless hot embossing process. The effects of process parameters, diameter and position of the micro-holes, hole diameter, and pitch of the micro-hole array mold on the filling deformation of glass in contactless hot embossing were comprehensively investigated. It is found that placing the micro-hole farther away from the mold center renders decrease in both filling height and tip curvature but increase in the eccentricity of the embossed glass microlens. As a result, the formed glass microlens array shows a nonuniform distribution of filling height and tip curvature. Furthermore, reducing the pitch of micro-hole array mold can significantly improve the uniformity of formed microlens array. Based on these experimental results, the forming mechanism of microlenses and microlens arrays in contactless hot embossing process is summarized. Finally, a glass microlens array with decent uniformity in the center area was hot embossed by using a SiC micro-hole array mold.

To effectively manage turbine blade weight and blade deflection under severe weather conditions, longer and stiffer blades are required, fiber glass producers have devoted significant efforts to developing and commercializing high-modulus (HM) glass fiber products of the first generation. The current focuses aim at the commercialization of the second generation and the development of the third-generation products. This article briefly reviews four key areas: (a) the benefit of longer blades on wind energy generation, (b) characteristics of HM glass fibers of various generations, (c) fundamental science and understanding behind HM glass fiber development, and (d) finally statistically based composition (C)–property (P) and structure (S)–property (P) modeling approaches in new glass design.

Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate the structural response of titania silicate glass to temperature. The coefficient of thermal expansion is computed for two titania silicate glasses with 0 and 10 mol% titania content, the structures of which are presented in terms of radial and angular distributions. Revealed by the different changing rates of intertetrahedra bond angles and bond lengths with respect to the Ti and Si atoms, the glass structures tend to exhibit a nonvectorized expansion process at elevated temperatures, leading to inconsistent expansion rates of the structures in different scales. While the average length of TiO and Si-O bonds both increases with temperature, the decrease in the coefficient of thermal expansion by the addition of Ti atoms is associated with the different expansion rate of tetrahedra. Arising from the gradual decrease in atomic overlapping, decrease in free volume inside the glass with temperature is also identified.

We compared the impact of alumina doping on the structure of Al₂O₃–SiO₂ amorphous thin films and bulk glasses using Raman spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction. In both thin films and bulk glasses, the addition of Al₂O₃ is accompanied by an increase in the mean Si–O–T angle and an evolution of the ring statistics with a decrease in the proportion of small rings. We evidenced structural differences between sputtered films and fused bulk glasses. Sputtered Al₂O₃–SiO₂ thin films are about 6%–7% denser than their equivalent Al₂O₃–SiO₂ bulk glasses. This difference is mainly due to a change in ring statistics with the formation of small rings within the sputtered thin films. These structural differences in atomic structural organization highlight the impact of the synthesis conditions and open the door to further investigation of the structure–functional property relationships in sputtered Al₂O₃–SiO₂ thin films.

Ytterbium-doped lanthanum titanate glasses were prepared by levitation melting for the detailed characterization of the $�{\mathrm{Yb}}^{�3�+�}$ spectroscopic properties in the rare-earth titanate glass host. Low-temperature fluorescence spectroscopy reveals distinct site-selectivity in both static and lifetime fluorescence measurements suggesting an absence of clustering as well as significant variation of local ytterbium environments. Typical site-selectivity behavior of a shrinking Stark manifold with lower excitation energy is observed. At 77 K, both the mean emission frequency and the fluorescence lifetime initially increase as the excitation energy decreases from about 11100 to 10750 $�{\mathrm{cm}}^{�-�1�}$ and then slightly decrease at lower excitation energy. Temperature-dependent lifetime measurements between 77 and 420 K show a decreasing lifetime with increasing temperature and are well described by a two-level thermal activation model. The temperature-dependent fluorescence spectroscopy coupled with a room temperature white light absorption measurement allow the determination of the Stark energy levels of $�{\mathrm{Yb}}^{�3�+�}$ in lanthanum titanate glass as well as the calculation of the laser cross-sections.

Control of sulfate-induced melt fining without excessive foaming is one of the critical steps in maintaining the stability of E-glass fiber manufacturing processes. Besides, the efficiency of combustion or energy utilization is directly affected by the extent of the melt-foaming. A fundamental understanding of key factors affecting melt foaming under the simulated oxy-fuel combustion environment will enable commercial E-glass fiber production to optimize both batch chemistry and operation conditions to achieve adequate furnace control. In this study, six types of E-glass batches with the same target glass composition were prepared by using four different CaO sources; calcined limes with different SO₃ contents, limestone, limestone with sodium sulfate, and a mixture of limestone and calcined lime. All batch samples were examined by HTMOS-EGA system (high temperature melting observation system with evolved gas analysis). HTMOS enables monitoring batch-to-melt conversation steps by using a high-resolution camera and EGA detects the evolved reaction gaseous, such as CO, CO₂, and SO₂ via an Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) gas analyzer. Gases of water vapor, N₂, and O₂ were introduced accordingly into the fused quartz crucible to simulate similar oxy-fuel atmosphere of the furnace operation. This study aimed to investigate the effects of different SO₃ contents in batches and different raw material chemistries on the foam formation in E-glass melts under the oxy-fuel atmosphere. Different raw materials were characterized by mineralogical analysis, chemical analysis, particle size distribution, chemical oxygen demanding (COD) level, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis. Although some of the batches contained the same SO₃ content, different foam formations resulted from the effect of the batch chemistry. Our detailed HTMOS-EGA investigations show that not only SO₃ content in the batch affects foam formation in E-glass melts, but also raw material chemistry and particle size have strong effects on the melt foaming in E-glass batch melting, especially for those of ingredients having hydroxide phases and/or finer particles with higher specific areas.

Topological constraint theory has emerged as a rapid, predictive method to quantify the relationship between structural rigidity and glass properties. Understanding the structure of telluro-vanadate (TeO₂–V₂O₅) glasses has remained difficult owing to their complex mixture of structural units. Here, we propose a topological model that accurately captures the glass structure and can be used to predict properties such as glass transition temperature and hardness. The experimentally obtained properties are in agreement with predicted properties by the model suggesting that this simplified structural model accurately describes the V₂O₅–TeO₂ structure.

Single (TiO₂) and complex (TiO₂ and ZrO₂) nucleating agents were added in CaO–Al₂O₃–SiO₂–ZnO–Na₂O–K₂O-based multicomponent glass to investigate its crystallization behavior and physical properties according to the types and amounts of nucleating agents. Nonisothermal analysis revealed crystallization behavior with an activation energy (E) of 165.176–518.985 kJ/mol and Avrami constant (n) of .73–2.12 with the complex nucleating agent. X-ray diffraction was used to observe the titanite and zircon crystalline phases in glass when using complex nucleating agents, and the crystallinity was found to be 43%–55%. Scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy were used to observe the plate-shaped titanite and column-shaped zircon crystalline phase in the glass matrix, and the glossiness was found to be decreased owing to the crystallization of the glass. The glass-ceramic showed a higher hardness and fracture toughness value of 6.45–6.7 GPa and 1.54–3.35 MPa∙m^1/2 when using the complex nucleating agent rather than when using the single nucleating agent.