Security Glazing: Is It All It's Cracked Up To Be?

The BRE Trust-funded research project `Security glazing: is it all that it’s cracked up to be?’ followed a spate of burglaries in the West End of London in 2008. The burglaries in London used `smash-and-grab’ attacks to steal expensive goods such as jewellery and designer clothing from window displays. This showed that of all building elements, glazing offers the least resistance to impact and explosive loading. This was further demonstrated in the 2011 series of riots in UK major cities. Additionally, the majority of injuries from explosive events including terrorist attack invariably result from flying glass particles. As such, improvements in the design of glazing to resist attack are required.
Standards are key to selection of an appropriate product. However, in the case of glazing, a number of different standards have been developed for glazing based upon arbitrary methods. For example, glazing may be subject to real attackers or a known mass at a known velocity. The results from such tests are not typically comparable with each other and so it is not immediately obvious which standard is best suited to a particular application.
This publication has been produced from a BRE Trust-funded research project to investigate the performance of glazing in security applications. It outlines the different types of glazing, guides the reader through the maze of applicable standards and offers advice on selecting glazing systems appropriate to the intended use.