Heaven’s Light is Our Guide

Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology (RUET)

Department of Glass & Ceramic Engineering (GCE)

Experiment no: 05

Study on manufacturing of glass fiber and their testing

Submitted By

Abdullah Subbir
Roll: 1706024
GCE4112
Glass Manufacturing Sessional

Submitted To
Md. Jahidul Haque
Lecturer
Dept. of GCE

Submitted on 12 Dec, 2022

Experiment No.05

Experiment Name: Study on manufacturing of glass fiber and their testing.

Objective:

• To know about Glass fiber.

• To know about manufacturing process of Glass fiber.

• To know about their testing.

Introduction:

Glass fibers a material consisting of numerous extremely fine fibers of glass. It has roughly
comparable mechanical properties to other fibers such as polymers and carbon fiber.
Although not as rigid as carbon fiber, it is much cheaper and significantly less brittle when
used in composites. Because of its high specific strength, stiffness, and environmental
resilience, glass fiber reinforced composites are used in the maritime industry and pipe
sectors.

Glass fiber is formed when thin strands of silica-based or other formulation glass are
extruded into many fibers with small diameters suitable for textile processing. Since ancient
times, glass has been heated and drawn into fine threads. Egypt and Venice both used this
method. Prior to its recent usage in textile applications, all glass fiber had been produced
as staple fiber which is, clusters of short lengths of fiber.

Selected properties are-

• Glass fibers are useful thermal insulators because of their high ratio of surface area
to weight.
 • The increased surface area which makes them much more susceptible to chemical
attack.

• The freshest, thinnest fibers are the strongest because the thinner fibers are more
ductile.
• Thinner filaments can bend further before they break.

• High tensile strength.

• The viscosity must be relatively low. If it is too high, the fiber will break during
drawing. If it is too low, the glass will form droplets instead of being drawn out into
a fiber.

Manufacturing processes:

Textile-grade glass fibers are made from silica (SiO2) sand, which melts at

1720°C/3128°F. Although continuously refined and improved, today’s glass fiber

manufacturers combine this high heat and quick cool strategy with other steps in a process
that is basically the same as that developed in the 1930s, albeit on a much larger scale. This
process can be divided into five fundamental steps:

Step 1: Batching

Although a viable commercial glass fiber can be made from silica alone, other ingredients
are added to reduce the working temperature and impart other properties that are useful in
specific applications.

For example, E-glass, originally aimed at electrical applications, with a composition

including SiO2, AI2O3, CaO and MgO was developed as a more alkali-resistant alternative
to the original soda lime glass. Later, boron was added via B2O3 to increase the difference
between the temperatures at which the E-glass batch melted and at which it formed a
crystalline structure to prevent clogging of the nozzles used in fiberization (Step 3, below).
In the initial stage of glass manufacture, therefore, these materials must be carefully
weighed in exact quantities and thoroughly mixed (batched). Batching has become
automated, using computerized weighing units and enclosed material transport systems.

Step 2: Melting

From the batch house, another pneumatic conveyor sends the mixture to a high temperature

(≈1400ºC/2552ºF) natural gas-fired furnace for melting. The furnace is typically divided
into three sections, with channels that aid glass flow. The first section receives the batch,
where melting occurs and uniformity is increased, including removal of bubbles. The
molten glass then flows into the refiner, where its temperature is reduced to 1370ºC/2500ºF.
The final section is the forehearth, beneath which is located a series of four to seven
bushings that, in the next step, are used to extrude the molten glass into fibers. Large
furnaces have several channels, each with its own forehearth.

Control of oxygen flow rates are crucial because furnaces that use the latest technology
burn nearly pure oxygen instead of air because it helps the natural gas fuel to burn cleaner
and hotter, melting glass more efficiently. It also lowers operating costs by using less
energy and reduces nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by 75% and carbon dioxide (CO2)
emissions by 40%.

The industry takes three main approaches to glass melting: (1) indirect melt (also called
marble remelt); (2) direct melt using larger-scale furnaces (8,000 to 100,000 metric tonnes
per year); and (3) direct melt using smaller-scale furnaces (150 to 200 metric tonnes per
year), which are also called paramelters. For indirect marble remelt, molten glass is sheared
and rolled into marbles roughly 0.62 inch (15 to 16 millimeters) in diameter, which are
cooled, packaged and then transported to a fiber manufacturing facility where they are
remelted for fiberization (see “Step 3”). The marbles facilitate visual inspection of the glass
for impurities, resulting in a more consistent product. The direct melt process transfers
molten glass in the furnace directly to fiber-forming equipment. Because direct melting
eliminates the intermediate steps and the cost of forming marbles, it has become the most
widely used method.

Step 3: Fiberization

Glass fiber formation, or fiberization, involves a combination of extrusionand attenuation.

In extrusion, the molten glass passes out of the forehearth through a bushing made of an
erosion-resistant platinum/rhodium alloy with very fine orifices, from 200 to as many as
8,000. Bushing plates are heated electronically, and their temperature is precisely controlled
to maintain a constant glass viscosity. Water jets cool the filaments as they exit the bushing
at roughly 1204ºC/2200ºF. Attenuation is the process of mechanically drawing the extruded
streams of molten glass into fibrous elements called filaments, with a diameter ranging from
4 to 34 micrometers (one-tenth the diameter of a human hair). A high-speed winder catches
the molten streams and, because it revolves at a circumferential speed of ~2 miles/~3
kilometers per minute (much faster than the molten glass exits the bushings), tension is
applied, drawing them into thin filaments.

The bushings are expensive, and their nozzle design is critical to fiberization. Nozzle
diameter determines filament diameter, and the nozzle quantity equals the number of ends.

The bushing also controls the fiber yield or yards of fiber per pound of glass.

Step 4: Coating

In the final stage, a chemical coating, or size, is applied. Size is typically added at 0.5 to
2.0% by weight and may include lubricants, binders and/or coupling agents. Some size
chemistries are compatible only with polyester resin and some only with epoxy while others
may be used with a variety of resins.

Step 5: Drying/packaging

Finally, the drawn, sized filaments are collected together into a bundle, forming a glass
strand composed of 51 to 1,624 filaments. The strand is wound onto a drum into a forming
package that resembles a spool of thread. The forming packages, still wet from water
cooling and sizing, are then dried in an oven, and afterward they are ready to be palletized
and shipped or further processed into chopped fiber, roving or yarn. Roving is a collection
of strands with little or no twist. An assembled roving, for example, made from 10 to 15
strands wound together into a multi-end roving package, requires additional handling and
processing steps. Yarn is made from one or more strands, which may be twisted to protect
the integrity of the yarn during subsequent processing operations, such as weaving.

Fig: Glass fiber is made by blending raw materials, melting them in a three-stage furnace furnace,
extruding the molten glass through a bushing in the bottom of the forehearth, cooling the filaments with
water and then applying a chemical size. The filaments then are gathered and wound into a package.
Testing:

Tensile testing of single fibers to measure strength and modulus

Depending on fiber modulus, two types of single fiber tensile tests are available. Low
modulus fibers are usually tested by direct gripping and high modulus fibers (e.g. carbon)
are tested by using a carrier like paper frames. (2006). The paper frame setup was adopted
to maintain consistency. A universal testing machine equipped with a 50N load cell was
used for tensile testing. Specially ordered rubber jaws were used for excellent gripping. At
first any crimp in the fiber was removed manually and the fiber was fixed to the paper
frames. Tensile tests were carried out until failure at a cross-head displacement rate of 1
mm/min. To obtain a representative set of results more than 50 single fibers of each type
were tested. Tensile strength and failure strains were calculated from the respective maxima
in the recorded stress-strain graph. Modulus is calculated from the initial elastic portion (1-
2 % strain) of the stress-strain plot using origin software.

Fig. 2. Single fibertesting set-up. Direct gripping (left) is used for textile fibers and paper frame set-up
(right) is used for technical fibers. Note the pretension weight used to remove the crimp before testing in
direct gripping method.
Point defect test

The fiber is tested for point defect with an optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR),
which uses scattered light to indicate the location of any anomalies along the length of the
fiber.

Fig: OTDR test.

SEM

Fractography of these fibers were also carried out using scanning electron microscopy.

Fig: SEM images of glass fibers: (a) commercial; (b) untreated; (c), (d) GF-5BL; (e), (f) GF-20BL.
Conclusion:

Thirty years ago, glass reinforcements for composites were of mainly two types: E-glass
and S-glass. E-glass was one of the first used to produce continuous glass filament and still
makes up the majority of the world’s fiberglass production today. The ASTM standards
that regulate glass type definition essentially outline the constituent materials, not the final
properties required. Thus, a change in glass type indicates a discrete composition of raw
ingredients, which may include a variety of elements (see chart above). Responding to
market demands for higher properties, tailored performance for specific applications and
lower cost, glass fiber manufacturers now offer a number of more specifically targeted
product types. In this experiment, we have learnt about the commercial manufacturing
process of glass fiber.