June 6, 2012 – The second day of the Insulating Glass Manufacturers Alliance Summer Technical Conference featured a meeting of the new Emerging Technology and Innovation Technical Committee. Executive director Margaret Webb started the day with an overview of the committee's scope and guidelines. Helen Sanders of Sage Electrochromics chaired.
June 6, 2012 – The second day of the Insulating Glass Manufacturers
Alliance Summer Technical Conference featured a meeting of the new
Emerging Technology and Innovation Technical Committee. Executive
director Margaret Webb started the day with an overview of the
committee's scope and guidelines. Helen Sanders of Sage Electrochromics
chaired.
John Greenzweig of H.B. Fuller chaired the Gas Permeability Task Group. This keenly watched group is looking for correlations between the ASTM E 2190 IG performance standard and loss of gas. Greenzweig discussed the road map the task group had created to guide its efforts and the need to issue requests-for-proposals to labs to find one able to do the work.
Randi Ernst of FDR Design then chaired the task group on validation of the Mocon OpTech technology for analyzing gas concentrations in IG units. In a very technical presentation, Ernst updated the group on his experiments aimed at showing this technology could generate accurate gas concentration readings even at lower concentrations and through coated glass.
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| Ernst explains some OpTech test results.
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David Cooper of Guardian chaired the task group for Vacuum Insulating Glass next. He went over the group's search through the available literature on the technology and said the group's goal was to create a generic white paper that would introduce the technology to a wider glazing audience. Many technical hurdles still exist to fulfilling the full potential of this technology, but Cooper noted that a few VIG units are now on sale in the international market.
The Advanced Fenestration Testing Task Group, chaired by Tim Snow of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, is looking for less expensive and easier ways to test IG units, especially edge spacers. It is looking at various apparatuses to assess their feasibility.
Sanders then chaired the Life Cycle Assessment task group. This group is working on protocols for detailing the cradle-to-grave history of products so that buyers can more easily assess their environmental impact. The goal is to develop a labeling system that would work something like food labels, except listing environmental impacts and life cycle history instead of ingredients. Saunders noted there has been significant debate around some of the points about the environmental impact of various product inputs.
After lunch, Sanders was presented with a birthday cake and a round of Happy Birthday from the delegates. Delegates were also treated to some very entertaining video from the the Fall Technical Committee Meeting in Tempe, Ariz., where Sanders showed off her belly dancing skills.
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| Move over, Michael Jackson.
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Once the laughter had died down, it was on to Ken Rubis of Dow Corning and his fascinating presentation on cold bending IG units. Rubis shared the results of studies done by a consortium of several organizations to investigate how cold bending affects the seal quality of IG units. Rubis' group prepared full finite element analysis models of IG units then certified the models with real-world tests at ATI test labs. Large curtain wall panels were bent, in some cases up to 15 inches, then hit with 100 psi wind loads. Delegates were surprised by how well seals and the glass held up under even these extreme conditions.
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| Go ahead and bend it.
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The IGMA then moved on to the afternoon's fun activity, an urban scavenger hunt organized by Urban Quest. Delegates squared off into teams of four and competed to see who could solve puzzles and find various locations around downtown Ottawa the fastest. The incredibly energetic Crystal Archibald of Kohltech led her team of Bill Briese (GED Integrated Solutions) and Aaron Ryan (Pella) to victory. The fourth member of Archibald's team, your humble editor, soon found the pace too far in excess of his normal activity of sitting at a desk and retired to the relative comfort of a nearby pub patio.
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| To the victor go the spoils.
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