Ultrasonic evaluation of residual stresses in flat glass tempering by an original double interferometric detection

In industrial thermal tempering of glass, the knowledge of the homogeneity of compressive residual stress field on the glass product is fundamental to guarantee the quality of the tempered glass product. In this paper, we use the acoustoelasticity phenomenon in order to estimate the residual stress distribution by using acoustic surface wave. We present an experimental setup based on a double interferometric detection in which an aspheric lens is associated with a beam splitter and a YAG laser whose power is 100 mW. This relative high power enables us to carry out measurements on surface flat glass although optical reflection coefficient is typically weak (< 10%). Using these two points of detection, the evolution of relative surface wave velocity is obtained with a good accuracy. At last, a comparison between the numerical modeling and experimental results shows the potentiality of an ultrasonic method to estimate stress distribution in flat glass tempering.