SR41 Behaviour of annealed glass under simulated human impact (1992)

The safety of building occupants when glass fails under accidental human impact is of great concern. This report investigates the effects of glass thickness, pane geometry and size and the glass supporting frame on the impact resistance of annealed glass.

A soft body impact test specified in IS0 7892 was found to be suitable for simulating accidental human impact on glass. The test results indicate that resistance to soft body impact is dependent primarily on glass thickness. Impact resistance did not appear to be a function of pane area.

There were correlations between increased impact resistance and both reduced aspect ratio and reduced glass width. There was a strong correlation between glass deflection relative to the mullions and glass thickness at failure. Glass deflection was a linear function of the square root of impact energy, whereas mullion deflection varied directly with impact energy.