Guestbook
IGMA Moves Forward with New Technical Publications

At the recent Insulating Glass Manufacturers Alliance (IGMA) meeting held in New Orleans, La., a number of much-needed technical publications for the fenestration industry were approved. These included:

TM-1300-13, Design Considerations for Multiple Cavity Insulating Glass Units:

The purpose of this document is to guide the design, fabrication and use of multiple-cavity insulating glass (IG) within the fenestration industry. It is not intended to duplicate pre-existing guidelines for single-cavity IG. Rather, it is meant to expand upon those guidelines where requirements for multiple-cavity IG differ from those of single cavity IG. These guidelines are applicable for the evaluation of the manufacturing processes of sealed insulating glass units and quality requirements.

TB-1500-13, Guidelines to Reduce Instances of Thermal Stress:
This technical bulletin provides guidelines relating to thermal stress considerations for window glass products used in commercial and residential building envelope projects. Its purpose is to give the user specific guidelines and design assistance toward avoiding glass problems that arise from breakage caused by thermal stress conditions. The technical bulletin is intended to consider conditions known to be important to thermal stress in glass, a knowledge base of reference materials, available industry information, do’s and don’ts guidelines for thermal stress and practical design considerations for the review and analysis of thermal stress. Conditions addressed in this publication are altitude, building design, design winter conditions, elevation (orientation), glass-edge conditions, post-installation films, risk conditions associated with framing considerations, glass kind and type, heat traps (indoor conditions), number of glazing lites, solar radiation, spandrel and on-site storage conditions.

IGMA has agreed to provide the majority of the funding required to create the models for the development of an ASTM standard for the thermal stress for IGUs. Total funding required to develop the standard is $75,000. Both the Design Considerations for Multiple Cavity IGUs and Guidelines to Reduce Thermal Stress should be available this fall.

TB-1700-13, Language of Sealed Insulating Glass Units:
This document covers current terminology used by the industry in the design, development and manufacture of insulating glass units.

IGMA does not rest on our past accomplishments but continuously looks for new technologies and processes to improve the performance durability of insulating glass products. All IGMA standards are developed by leading-edge research and technology. Research projects are governed by the Emerging Technology and Innovation Committee, which has four active task groups:

• Gas Permeability – currently the task group is reviewing the draft RFP for Phase 2, which encompasses a modification of the EN 1279 standard.

• NREL Advanced Testing Fenestration Task Group is seeking to develop a “big hammer” test, which would result in faster test times as well as developing a new standard specification to test the gas content of IGUs, which use exotic gases such as krypton and xenon.

• The Vacuum Insulating Glazing Task Group is working on a white paper on VIG.

• The Life Cycle Assessment Task Group was provided an opportunity to review draft nine of the Product Category Rule for Fenestration Products

The Certification and Education Committee, specifically the Spacer and Integrated Spacer Systems Task Group, are looking at alternate ways to determine component equivalency.

The 2014 Winter Conference will be held February 25-28, 2014, in San Francisco.

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