Insulated Glass and Safety Glazing

Insulating Glass and Safety Glazing Fast Facts

State-of-the-art, fully automated test equipment.
Customized test procedures for specific industry or application requirements.
Accredited to all major applicable industry programs, including IGMA, IGCC, SGCC, and IAS.
More than 30 years of testing experience.
Tests more than 2,000 samples of safety glazing and more than 1,000 insulating glass units a year.

Value of the Testing

Certification of fenestration products ensures their performance and therefore their widespread use in the building industry. Testing done by the Insulating Glass and Safety Glazing Department of Architectural Testing, which is accredited by the International Accreditation Service, provides glass manufacturers the testing needed to qualify for certification programs run by both the Insulating Glass Certification Council and the Safety Glazing Certification Council. Architectural Testing has more than 15 years of experience in these two fields of testing.

For testing insulating glass, we test for seal durability, weathering, and volatile fog in two test chambers—one a high-humidity chamber and one an accelerated weathering chamber. Insulating glass units being tested endure 15 weeks of testing time, alternating between the two chambers. Testing exposes insulating glass units to varying temperatures, ultraviolet radiation, and changes in humidity. In addition, we have a third test chamber in which ultraviolet radiation and heat are applied to test for chemical fogging.

In testing safety glazing, we test tempered glass for breakage or fragmentation size and laminated or organic-coated glass for penetration and film or interlayer degradation. Technicians place a test sample into an impact frame, and a 100-pound bag strikes the glass, simulating the energy that a person impacting the glass would generate.

Innovations in the Testing

As part of our commitment to providing the most comprehensive testing in the marketplace, we constantly strive to develop new and innovative tests, giving our clients the ability to improve their products. For example, we are currently updating all of our insulating glass and safety glazing operations with state-of-the-art equipment. To ease our operations, our insulating glass accelerated weathering and high-humidity chambers have been designed for control using Windows™. This allows the engineering staff of Architectural Testing to review the daily performance of the insulating glass chambers at any of our locations. These new chambers are also double the size of standard insulating glass chambers, giving our labs more capacity and reducing backlog. For our clients’ convenience, Architectural Testing tests more than 1,000 insulating glass units a year at our labs located in four states—Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Texas, and California.

Our safety glazing testing is also modernizing with an automated impact system that doubles the number of tests we can perform daily. In addition, the automated system also allows for quick changeovers when testing differently sized products. Our automated system in Pennsylvania alone tests more than 1,500 samples of glass a year. For our clients’ convenience, we perform safety glazing testing at labs in five states—Pennsylvania, California, Minnesota, Texas, and Florida.