Reinforcing glass fibers

The term glass fibers refers both to fibers used as thermal insulation, which are well known because they are visible in many everyday applications, and to those used as reinforcements, the subject of this dossier, which are not very visible in their final applications because they are most often combined with organic matrices to form what are commonly known as composites. In view of the presentation and adaptation of reinforcement fibers to textile processing methods, French standardization has adopted the generic term verre textile to distinguish the latter.

The main application for glass fiber textiles is plastics reinforcement. However, over the last twenty years in particular, their field of application has expanded to include other matrices (cement, plaster, bitumen, etc.) and other uses. For this reason, whenever the opportunity arises (e.g. in the case of alkali-resistant glass for cement reinforcement), we provide additional information on textile glass fibers intended for these new matrices.

For more information, visit [Doc. AM 5 132] , where you'll find a bibliography, key suppliers and standardization.