The Design and Development of Glass Windscreens for Wide‐bodied Aircraft Available to Purchase

FOR many years most transport aircraft throughout the world have used a uniform windscreen construction with a single ply of tempered glass for pressure resistance, combined with a thick polyvinyl butyral interlayer and one, or more, thin facing ply glasses. The thick interlayer is usually reinforced at the edges with a metal insert and acts as a diaphragm to provide bird impact resistance, and also serves as a secondary load path to contain pressurisation in the event of failure of the primary glass ply. Installation of this type of windscreen is by conventional bolts, passing through the edge reinforcing metal insert.