Do you need a failure analysis for your glass products
What challenges do manufacturers face in the glass industry?
The glass industry is one of the few sectors whose manufacturing techniques are based primarily on craft trades. The lack of standardization in production tools, the fragility of materials, and the scarcity of know-how place strong industrial constraints on the glass industry when it comes to designing glass that is strong, innovative, and compliant with health and environmental requirements.
Glass failure issues
Flat glass, hollow glass, fiberglass or crystal, studying their characteristics enables companies to better control their assembly, packaging, and use. This technical challenge leads glass manufacturers and distributors to call on contract laboratories to support them in material testing, optimizing their production process, and developing effective surface treatments.
FILAB’s laboratory is generally called upon for two types of issues:
Interactions between the packaging and its environment (appearance of an external deposit or stain, wear, oxidation, etc.)
Interactions between the packaging and its contents (migration phenomenon)
For the first issue, the failure generally appears after the product has been placed on the market, often triggered by customer complaints, requiring a high level of responsiveness in handling the analysis.
The failure analysis method
At the FILAB laboratory, failure analysis is carried out in a methodical way:
- Characterize the chemical composition of the deposit using SEM-FEG-EDX, XPS, TOF-SIMS, ICP-MS or GC-MS depending on its nature (organic, mineral)
- Identify the origin of the deposit: checking packaging compliance, surface characterization, production process audit, and more.
- Provide detailed expertise and propose tailored solutions to prevent the risk of failure from recurring: root cause determination, implementation of corrective and preventive actions, improvement of industrial processes, development of protective surface treatments for packaging, and more.
As for the second issue, the health stakes are higher. Indeed, possible migration between glass packaging and its contents can pose risks to the consumer or end user. To analyze and anticipate these phenomena, FILAB carries out aging tests and then uses ICP-AES or ICP-MS to analyze the chemical behavior of the substances present. The analysis results and their interpretation will enable our clients to assess the risks and the chemical compatibility between the packaging material – here, glass – and its contents.
Manufacturers and customers alike must therefore remain vigilant in their manufacturing process in order to avoid failures related to packaging quality or its use. Thus, checks before and after commercialization will contribute to the quality of the final product.
Our technical resources for analyzing failures in the glass industry
FILAB’s laboratory provides glass industry professionals with a range of technical resources and a complementary state-of-the-art analytical platform depending on the failures to be characterized:
