How can we calculate the force which a glass sheet can endures?

Question

How can we calculate the force which a glass sheet can endures?

Answer 1

This turns out to be very difficult. The strength of a glass sheet has almost nothing to do with the strength of the glass and everything to do with the presence of scratches - scratches which were, generally, not put there deliberately and may even be invisible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_str...

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/strn...

In theory, you can make assumptions about the probability of the presence of various imperfections and proceed from there, but I wouldn't even try, though others have:

http://search.informit.com.au/documentSu...

I'd go with experimental results. That's what the pros do:

http://www.glassfiles.com/library/4/arti...

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cp...

You can extrapolate from previous experimental results, which is what various calculators such as this one do:

http://www.dupont.com/safetyglass/en/sci...