ANNEALING PROCESS

OF GLASS
NAJEELA BANU J
B.ARCH 4 TH YEAR
911518251016
GLASS ARCHITECTURE
MSSA,KILAKARAI.
The process of annealing glass relieves internal stresses, which could
otherwise leave it susceptible to cracking or shattering in response to
minor mechanical or thermal shock. This makes annealing a vital step in
the production of strong, stable, and heat-resistant glass.

The Annealing Process:

• In glass manufacturing, a special type of furnace, called a lehr, is used for the annealing
process.
• A lehr is a long oven that is comprised of different heating zones.
• Glassware moves through the oven’s zones on a conveyor belt.
• To ensure maximum stress removal, each product design requires a unique annealing
schedule that takes into consideration the glass composition, coefficient of thermal
expansion, and thickness.
• To begin the annealing process, the glass is cooled to a temperature which allows the atoms to
move freely while still preserving the glassware’s dimensional characteristics.
• The glassware is kept at a steady temperature for an extended period of time to create structural
consistency and to minimize stresses.
• The temperature is unique to each glass composition and the time is determined by the physical
design and shape of each product.
• Glass cooling occurs between the annealing temperature and the strain temperature.
• This period is the most important part of the cooling process – it must allow the outside and inside
of the glassware to cool at the same rate.
• At the annealing temperature, which must be above the glass transition temperature, the atoms in
the glass reorient.
• As the glass cools through the transition temperature to the strain temperature, the atoms become
rigid in the glass structure.
When cooling occurs slowly, the atoms are able to relax and the result is
an unstressed, well-annealed glass product. Controlled glass annealing:

• Ensures material consistency

• Minimizes stresses
• Prevents spontaneous breakage
• Essentially, annealing is the process of cooling glass in a controlled
manner to reduce internal stresses in the finished glass.
• Annealing commonly occurs at one of two points in the glass
production process:
• In many manufacturing processes (such as the float glass process),
high-temperature glass is cooled gradually after it reaches its glass
transition temperature.
• This is known as straight annealing.
• In some glass forming processes, for example, glass blowing, glass
cools spontaneously after forming.
• In these cases, annealing is performed by reheating the glass to its
glass transition temperature and then allowing it to cool in a
controlled, gradual way.
• This process is sometimes called reannealing to distinguish it from
straight annealing.
• Whether a glass is straight annealed or reannealed, the
fundamentals remain the same: within a certain temperature range
known as the annealing temperature (close to the glass transition
temperature), glass is soft enough that internal stresses can relax
through microscopic molecular shifts, but stiff enough that it doesn’t
deform under gravity.
• Lowering the temperature of glass from its annealing temperature
very slowly means that there is sufficient time for heat to distribute
itself evenly, and molecules have sufficient time to find their most
stable positions within the cooling glass.
• Once the glass passes the so-called strain point, at which point
microscopic flow effectively stops and molecules are fixed in place,
the glass can be cooled more rapidly to room temperature.
• Gradually cooling the glass in this manner prevents the formation of
stresses and ensures there are no “weak points” in the finished
glass.
Why Anneal?
• From a physical perspective, glass is a highly unusual material. Most solid materials are highly
‘ordered’ with their constituent molecules or atoms arranged in regular, repeating patterns called
crystal lattices.
• But the molecules in glass obey a different set of rules: they are, by definition, disordered.
• In fact, the arrangement of molecules inside solid glass resembles that of a liquid, except that they
are fixed in place and don’t move around.
• We say that glass is an amorphous solid.
• Crystalline solids and amorphous solids (i.e., glasses) respond to heat in very different ways. When
crystalline solids are heated, they undergo a spontaneous phase transition at their melting
temperature.
• Take water, for example: at -1 °C it’s an ordered, crystalline solid (ice), at 1 °C it’s a completely
disordered liquid.
• But when glass is heated, it doesn’t undergo a phase transition per se. Instead, it very gradually
tends toward a more liquid state.
• This smooth decrease in viscosity as temperature increases is due to the glass transition
(transformation), and it’s one of the defining features of glasses.
• The glass transition temperature can be practically considered as the temperature where the liquid
converts to a solid on cooling or conversely of which the solid begins to behave as a viscoelastic
solid on heating.
• Glass is worked and formed at very high temperatures, where its viscosity is low. When it is
allowed to cool rapidly (supercool), the glass becomes stiffer and stiffer as the disordered
molecules simply become more fixed in their positions. As this happens, internal stresses can
become trapped in the solidifying glass.
• The result is extremely brittle glass that can shatter easily.

The process of annealing enables the elimination of

internal stresses, producing strong and durable glass
suitable for widespread application.
FOLLOWING ARE THE TWO METHODS OF ANNEALING:
OVEN TREATMENT:
• In this method, the red-hot glass articles are
placed in ovens in which arrangement is made to
control the temperature.
• After articles are placed in the ovens, the
temperature is slowly brought down.
• This method is useful for small scale production.
FLUE TREATMENT:
• In this method, a long flue is provided and it is
constructed in such a way that there is gradual
decrease in temperature from one end of flue to
the other.
• The red-hot articles of glass are allowed to enter at
the hot end of flue and they are slowly moved on
travelling bands.
• They become cool when they reach the cool end
of flue. This method is useful for large scale
production.
Properties of Annealed Glass
• Annealed glass is much stronger and more durable than un-annealed glass, rendering it suitable for
cutting and drilling processes; and subsequent use in standard applications such as windows and
structural elements.
• Achieving a uniform stress distribution within the glass also renders it capable of resisting thermal
shock.
• This means that annealing plays an important role in the production of labware and bottles used in
food processing, for example.
• Annealing plays a special role in optical glasses.
• Optical applications require especially low spatial variations in refractive index, which can only be
achieved by a highly uniform structural state.
• The residual stresses that can be tolerated in optical glass are many orders of magnitude lower than
that of ordinary glassware, so optical glass must be “fine-annealed” over much longer time periods.
For example, ordinary glassware can generally be annealed in hours; but optical annealing may last
for weeks or even months to allow a much greater minimization of stresses.
• Fine-annealed glasses exhibit consistent and well-characterized refractive indices and can be ground
and polished without introducing undesirable birefringence in the glass.