Improvement of the optical transmission of an eroded soda lime glass by PVB and PES coatings

Abstract The aim of this work is to improve the optical transmission of a soda lime glass eroded by sandblasting by using polyvinyl butyrate (PVB) and polyester (PES) coatings. Various damage states were obtained in laboratory by varying the projected erodent sand mass (Mp=10–200 g). Transparent layers of PVB and PES were deposited on damaged surfaces. Uncoated eroded glass samples have their optical transmission T strongly deteriorated with the increase of sand mass. It decreases to 27% for a mass of 200 g. The use of the PVB and PES coatings on damaged surface ameliorate substantially the optical transmission. For the extreme case (Mp=200 g), the two deposited layers improve respectively to 87% and 81% with the PVB and the PES films. After a subsequent sandblasting damage on the covered glasses, the evaluation of the optical transmission shows that it only decreases to intermediate values (57% for PVB and 50% for PES).