Intrusion Resistance of Passenger Car Glazing - Development of a New Testing Standard

Dr. Matthias Kriegel-Gemmecke

Car crime is a growing concern in many countries. Introduction of laminated sidelights for passenger cars gives advantage of better protection against intrusion and theft of items from car.

Today no comprehensive test exists to measure intruder resistance performance for standard or specially designed glazing constructions. The German DIN has initiated a working group consisting of car manufacturers, glass suppliers, interlayer manufacturers and independent bodies to work on a new standard for intrusion resistance testing. This new standard is intended to be used to establish requirements for car constructions to prevent car crime. But it can also be used for promotion purposes and to quantify product performance.

The proposed test standard intends to qualify glazing constructions against manual attack using hand held tools with a weight of up to 5 kg. Products could be standard laminates already available but also specially designed high performance products.

The frame for glazing and the car body contributes to the resistance performance and will always be tested in combination with the glazing.

The test standard will take into account three basic types of attack tools, considering tools with blunt front end to break and push the glazing into the car, tools with cutting edge to create and enlarge holes and pointed tools to weaken glazing and prepare attack but not able to finish intrusion on it?s own.

Based on standardized attacks procedures with representatives of each tools category the test will rank performance of glazing and frame using a range of attack resistance levels. The test procedure includes a "push out test" which requires a minimum integrity of glazing after attack test.

The concept of the proposed test standard will be presented and a summary will be given of the experimental work necessary to fix the requirements for each of the proposed attack resistance levels.

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