On the plastic deformation of soda-lime glass–a Cr³⁺ luminescence study of densification

Abstract

Silicate glasses are known to experience anomalous plastic behavior at micron scales: (1) they exhibit densification when flowing plastically; and (2) hydrostatic pressure affects the yield point. We have previously shown that densification maps are useful to infer a reliable constitutive law for the plastic response of silicate glasses. It is shown here that for soda-lime glass Cr³⁺ luminescence microspectroscopy may be used for that purpose. We also show that the constitutive law we have previously developed for amorphous silica provides a qualitative description of normal glasses, although it is unable to account for the finer details. More work is needed to quantitatively model normal-glass plasticity at the continuum length-scale.

Keywords:

• plasticity
• glass
• indentation
• constitutive model

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank G. Duisit, R. Gy, S. Pelletier and S. Roux for their help, advice and support.