Glass Flood Barrier Defences


Flood barriers offer a vital form of defence for areas threatened by the risk of floods, keeping residential homes, businesses and local architecture safe, while minimising the impact on the surrounding landscape.

Flood glazing refers to transparent laminated glass assemblies engineered to resist water ingress under hydrostatic and hydrodynamic pressures. These systems are designed to meet project-specific conditions such as river overflow, tidal inundation, or back flow pressure from overwhelmed drainage systems.

Incorporating Pilkington UK glass and our coated products into flood barriers can give additional benefits on top of strength and durability, such as anti-corrosion, self-cleaning, and lower embodied carbon.

Pilkington UK products that can be used within flood barrier assemblies


  • Pilkington Activ™ – our dual-action self-cleaning glass. The special coating reacts with daylight and rain to help keep the surface free from dirt, resulting in low maintenance, cleaner and clearer looking barriers.
  • Pilkington Endurance™ – a durable, on-line coated glass designed to prevent surface corrosion when exposed to water, moisture and humid environments.
  • Pilkington Optiwhite™ – our low-iron extra clear float glass with very high light transmission. It is practically colourless, keeping colours true in the view through the glass.
  • Pilkington Mirai™ – our low-carbon glass with up to 52% less embodied carbon compared to our standard 4 mm float glass.
  • Pilkington Optilam™ – laminated glass allows bespoke loading requirements including hydrostatic loads and debris impact resistance.

Glass flood barriers require laminated glass for safety.

Recommended Glass Products for Glass Flood Barriers

Glass Flood Barriers Downloads

Related Project References

Spectrum Calculation Program

Pilkington Spectrum is a Windows-based glass performance model which enables you to quickly and efficiently calculate key properties of a wide range of single glazing and insulating glass units. Also available as an app for mobile devices, you can use Pilkington Spectrum to provide the following information:

  • Light and solar properties (transmittance, reflectance, absorptance, g value, etc.).
  • Centre pane Ug-value.
  • Sound insulation values.
  • Global Warming Potential (GWP), or carbon footprint.
  • Ultra violet (uv) transmittance and colour rendering index (Ra).
  • Other properties (e.g. pendulum body impact resistance, fire resistance, resistance to manual attack, etc.).
Sign in