It is a well known fact that the surface represents the weak spot of glass, from a mechanical point of view. Failure always occurs starting from surface flaws or defects generated upon processing, handling or using the glass article. Several procedures have been proposed in the past for the strengthening of glass and the average resistance is increased by the creation of a surface compressive residual stress field. Unfortunately, this approach does not take into account the natural statistical distribution of the glass surface flaws. It is not rare, therefore, that tempering procedures lead to increases in strength variability. In this work, a novel approach based on fracture mechanics principles is presented for the production of glass with improved mechanical performance.
