Thematic Day Mechanics of Glasses

Glass is an everyday material, which humanity has used since the Stone Ages and fabricated since well before the Common Era. Today its uses range from cookware in our kitchens to lenses in outer space and high-tech components. The wide use of glasses is due to numerous advantageous properties, including transparency, high stiffness and hardness, low thermal expansion, high melting point, relative inertness, etc., yet despite these numerous advantageous properties glass still has a major drawback: It is fragile. Industry has tackled this issue via several schemes: altering the chemical composition, invoking phase separation, layering glass, replacing Na+ ions by K+ ions, etc. This thematic day will look at current issues concerning the mechanical properties of glasses with special emphases on the plasticity and fracture of glasses, from the environmental limit to dynamic fracture. Moreover, the thematic day will set up a work plan for a Mechanics of Glasses summer school.