Numerical Simulation And Experimental Study Of The Float Glass Stretching Process

Due to the transparent characteristic, glass was applied in many areas. Conventional manufacture method of flat glass were windowpane method and drawingdown-burnish method, but the limit of its technology restricted the serviceable range of glass. For the characteristics of little investment, fast building, good quality, high output, low cost and excessive breed, float glass technology was applied broadly, many countries dived much manpower and material sources into the research of float glass technology, the numerical simulation of the deforming of glass were developed constantly. Aiming at the heart part of float glass technology -tin trough, our country also made up innovation project to lucubrate its mechanism. In the thesis, we carried through numerical simulation and experimental study of the stretching process of float glass.We educed the constitutive equations of the melt glass based on the theories of the viscoplastic firstly, then with a whole consideration of the recent researches of physical chemistry properties of melt glass, we built up the mechanics model of the stretching process of float glass and took into account the effects of the temperature in the forming operation on the physical parameters and the coupling between heat and mechanics . This thesis was based on the potential finite element software-MARC, we put some boundary conditions and the constitutive equations with the user subroutines into its menus, so this software became more potential. We compared the results with the datum of the industry production, we found these results are satisfactory. The simulation results proved the numerical simulation of the stretching process of float glass was feasible, through it we could go deep into understand the float glass technology.The stretching process of the float glass was a complex viscoplastic deforming process with the coupling between heat and mechanics, it was a material nonlinearity and geometry nonlinearity large displacement process, so we could say that the glass forming process was more complex than the metal deforming process. Because the deforming of the float glass included manytechnological factors, we omitted some petit factors and caught the most important ones in the float glass stretching process in the article.In the thesis we carried out many trials and made statistics analysis to the experimental datum with the linear regression theories and curve fitting theories, we found some important relations between the glass thickness and some important technological parameters, these relations would be useful to production.The article was the probing work of the numerical simulation of the float glass stretching process. In the future, the omitting factors will be took into account. With the researching of the float glass technology and the development of the computer simulation technology , the numerical simulation of the float glass stretching process will give birth to the researching of the deforming technology and the improving of the quality of float glass and we will save much money for the trial.