Beautifully Tough

Toughened laminated glass has, quite literally, different layers which help to make it a first choice for architects, shopfitters, partitioners and balustrade suppliers, as Susan Sinden, Commercial Manager for ESG Group Ltd, explains.

Much as they may say that beauty is only skin deep, it’s the extraordinary properties of the film below the surface of a pane of toughened laminated glass that makes up its real beauty. This film, or to be more accurate, this interlayer, is what makes toughened laminated glass a favourite with some many providers of glazed elements of the construction industry.

Glass has been prized as a building material since Roman times, but it has never been so beautiful as it is today. Few products have ever been able to combine so much beauty with strength and durability as this; combining safety, versatility and practicality.

Toughened glass, which is toughened by passing through a highly advanced furnace, is four times tougher than ordinary annealed glass, so is already a robust product. However, the laminating process makes this a far stronger product for architectural uses.

Two or more sheets of toughened glass are laminated together using a sophisticated PVB interlayer, which not only adds further strength, but also gives the glass pane additional safety properties.

Toughened glass is already a far safer product that annealed glass, which, when damaged, will break into large shards which can inflict injury on anyone in close proximity. The debris caused from breakages is itself fairly hazardous. Toughened glass, on the other hand, shatters rather than breaks, fragmenting into much smaller particles which represent much less risk of injury to anyone near the pane.

The interlayer makes the glass pane much safer still.

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