Modeling and Experimental Studies of Crack Propagation in Laminated Glass Sheets

Polyvinyl Butyral (PVB) laminated glass has been widely used in automotive industry as windshield material. Cracks on the PVB laminated glass contain large amount of impact information, which can contribute to accident reconstruction investigation. In this study, the impact-induced in-plane dynamic cracking of the PVB laminated glass is investigated. Firstly, a drop-weight combined with high-speed photography experiment device is set up to investigate the radial cracks propagation on the PVB laminated glass sheet. Both the morphology and the velocity time history curve of the radial cracks are recorded and analyzed to investigate the basic mechanism of the crack propagation process. Afterwards, a three-dimensional laminated plate finite element (FE) model is set up and dynamic cracking process is simulated based on the extended finite element method (XFEM). Good agreements between the experimental and numerical results on the radial crack velocity time history and the crack morphology validate the effectiveness of the FE model. Results may provide an experimental technique as well as useful finite element model of PVB laminated glass for further systematically studies to explore the fracture mechanism and safety design improvement of PVB laminated glass.