Versatility and Applications of Glass Fibers

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2.3 Glass Fibers
It is a versatile modern industrial material made of Silica in the form of numerous extremely fine filaments. These fibers might be finer than human hair many times and seem in appearance and feel as silk. It is a light weight material and very strong with favorable bulk strength compared with metals and it can be easily formed by means of molding processes. GF is the most prevail fiber reinforcement that used in construction and among the most adaptable industrial materials. They exhibit different useful properties such as transparency, hardness, resistance to chemical attack, inertness, and stability, as well as desirable fiber properties such as strength, stiffness, and flexibility.
GF has generally comparable mechanical …show more content…

It was invited by Russell G. Slayter in (1932-1933) as a material to be utilized as thermal building insulation.
2.3.2 Manufacturing process
The process of production includes three stages, raw materials handling, (smelting and refining), and ( forming and finishing). The raw materials in manufacturing of continuous glassfiber are silicates, soda, clay, limestone, boric acid, fluorspar or several metallic oxides are blended to form a batch which suffers high conversion in temperature inside a furnace in order to melt it and refining into homogeneous melt during horizontal flow to the forehearth.
The melt is streamed to Platinum/Rhodium alloy nozzles of (0.76 to 2.03) mm orifices diameter and rapidly quenched and attenuated in air to prevent crystallization then formed into continues fine fibers. A suitable chemical sizing is used for fibers mechanically coating to aid further processing and performance of the end products.
2.3.3 Types
The basis textile of fiberglass in its pure form is silica (SiO2) and the various types produced as a result of adding some materials to pure case which impart several properties according to the desired

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