Glasses as engineering materials: A review

Glass products have applications in design engineering, and they can solve many special problems. These materials can work in situations in which plastics and metals would fail and need to be part of designer's repertoire. In some situations, by using these materials, some difficult problems would be solved. This paper contains a number of chapters as follows: a brief about ceramics family, a short history of glass, a brief about physics and the technology of glass fabrication, recently developed glasses with special destinations, testing methods and news about glass parts processing (grinding, waterjet processing, laser cutting, nanoimprint lithography, etc.). The last chapter of this review paper contain some strategic lines of glass usage in industry and estimations about the future of glass development. (C) (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.