KCC Glass announced that it has developed a ‘Lightweight Multi-Pane Insulating Glass System’ that can dramatically reduce the weight of multi-pane (triple, quadruple) insulating glass.
The newly developed system is characterized by a multi-pane insulating glass structure that uses thin 2.1mm-thick glass as the middle pane. Conventional multi-pane insulating glass is composed of 5–6mm-thick panes, making it thick and heavy and causing many difficulties during installation. When thin glass was used to address this, heat strengthening was not easy to apply, creating a constraint that made it difficult to maintain durability. In contrast, KCC Glass’s ‘Lightweight Multi-Pane Insulating Glass System’ uses 2.1mm glass that has undergone chemical strengthening and been coated with a Low-E coating for insulation, reducing weight by nearly half while maintaining the same durability and thermal insulation as before—greatly improving not only installation convenience but also window operability. In addition, by applying a Low-E coating even to the thin 2.1mm glass, it can satisfy a variety of properties tailored to customer requirements, including △thermal insulation △color and △transmittance. The key to this system lies in the chemical strengthening method. KCC Glass adopted a chemical strengthening method instead of the conventional heat strengthening method in the strengthening process for the 2.1mm glass used as the middle pane. The chemical strengthening method is easy to apply strengthening to even when used on thin glass, producing no distortion and maintaining clear reflected images. Furthermore, the supplied base glass can be cut directly to the desired size, greatly improving work efficiency.
KCC Glass has also completed verification of the durability and thermal insulation of the ‘Lightweight Multi-Pane Insulating Glass System.’ It passed a severe test for glass breakage caused by solar heat (80℃, RH 80%, light intensity 1000W/㎡, 120 hours), and in a wind pressure resistance test conducted by the Korea Conformity Laboratories (KCL), it obtained a wind load report of up to 11.5㎪. In addition, it passed both the KS L 2003 accelerated durability Class Ⅲ sealing test and the Class Ⅲ argon gas weather resistance test. Along with this, insulation testing conducted on windows applying the ‘Lightweight Multi-Pane Insulating Glass System’ secured thermal transmittance reports of 0.687W/㎡K for triple insulating glass and 0.668W/㎡K for quadruple insulating glass, proving its high thermal insulation performance.
A KCC Glass official stated, “The core of the newly developed lightweight multi-pane insulating glass system is that it substantially overcomes the structural limitations of multi-pane insulating glass by applying chemical strengthening and a Low-E coating to thin 2.1mm glass,” adding, “Because it can reduce weight by nearly half while maintaining the same durability and thermal insulation, we expect it to become a new standard that leads the era of lightweight architectural glass.”
Meanwhile, KCC Glass completed patent registration for the technology related to the ‘Lightweight Multi-Pane Insulating Glass System’ this past December. 02-2015-8500