Product Testing and Development

Daily in-house fire tests to the European standard for glass and glazings provide valuable and useful findings regarding the ideal combination of fire-resistant glass and the corresponding system structures. Pilkington Deutschland AG has two own test furnaces on its Gelsenkirchen site that provide reliable and valuable results and development impetus already in the run-up to obtaining third party system approval and can be used in co-operation with Pilkington by all Pilkington system partners for cooperative developments. Further fire tests to the various relevant standards are carried out on a national, European and global scale by independent, third party test laboratories together with the system partners following the most up to date standards according to national building regulations.

Glass products that are expected to fulfil additional requirements in terms of sound insulation , security and bullet-proof characteristics in addition to fire-resistant properties undergo extensive tests by specialised testing bodies. For example, Pilkington subjected various different glass types to around 500 test trials in order to obtain consistent and reliable results for a classification of the products during preparation of the application to obtain approvals for fire-resistant glass with barrier loading performance.