Clear Opportunity: Simon Duval Smith looks at automotive glazing and the advanced glass products delivered by Guardian Automotive for various specialty models
Designers and engineers in automotive production view glass as a rather tiresome necessity; fragile and brittle, it is not an ideal material to install in a machine subject to torsional stresses, severe jolts and almost constant vibration. In the early days of motoring, glass windscreens replaced goggles as a method for simply keeping wind and rain out of the driver’s eyes. Celluloid (an early form of plastic), remained popular for side and rear windows until the 1940s.
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As production of glass steadily increased, so it increasingly became viewed as a commodity. Yet advances in its manufacture have seen the development of various types and processes. Toughened glass, where the final shaped and sized pieces are heat treated to provide added strength is still widely used in side and rear windows. Windscreens in most markets are required to be made from laminated glass, where a thin sheet of a plastic is sandwiched between two glass layers to add strength and prevent shattering in the event of a collision.