tank construction in glass

[steve-thailand]

hi, i don't know if anyone can help me on this forum but its worth a shot.

i'm planning to build a bubble panel (a.k.a bubble wall). its like a tall, wide but very narrow fish tank but no fish, just bubbles.

i think the usual way to build them is acrylic sheets but that is quite expensive. i'd like to use standard (not tempered) 10mm window glass and the size of the tank will be 180cm high, 150cm wide and 1cm deep (front to back i mean).

i plan to use a piece of the same 10mm glass for the side walls, laying flat, about 3cm wide, and use 2 part epoxy glue to glue the sandwich of 3 pieces (front, back and side wall) together. i tested the glue join and its stronger than the glass.

my question is, the static pressure of 180cm head of water. do you think that will be a problem for this design? will the glass break?

thanks, steve

[dbosman]

Your question is one of the reasons glass shops exist.
I'd ask the shop you were planning on purchasing the safety glass from.
Safety glass as anything else would become a deadly danger if...

Accidents happen.
A colleague of my wife, lost her husband several years ago. He was on an exercise machine and fell off and into a patio window that was not safety glass.

[Cermet]

The total weight calculation is trivial: 180 cm * 150 cm *1 cm * 1gm/cm3 = 27000 gm;

now 1000 gm = 1 kg so we have (27000 gm)/(1000 gm/kg) = 27 Kg.

next (for english/americn units) 2.2 lbs = 1 kg; so the total 'weight of water contained is 59.4 lbs.

Since 10 mm glass is very thick, that is a trivial force on those plates.

dbosman, I am very sorry for the terrible tragedy. Handling glass is always something that must be done carefully. Any good tank sealent would hold the glass plates together. The edges should be polished by the shop after cutting. Also, these plates/sealent should be 'clamped' to dry and that means wood slats for the clamps or the glass could be damaged and crack ... .

[Cermet]

One point - my weight was for water only (27 Kg) - the glass weight was not done.

[steve-thailand]

thanks but i think the important number to think about is the hydrostatic pressure on the glass at depth which according to http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ for 1.8m deep is 0.18kg/cm2

that doesn't sound like a lot but if you work that out for a 10x10cm (4"x4") square that's 18kg or 40lbs.

if i load put a 18kg load on a 10x10 square of my 10mm glass, it has no problems supporting it. but if i repeat that over the whole width of the tank, i'm not so sure.

i doubt my local glass shop has any idea and will probably just try sell me tempered glass at 5x the price.

i guess i'll just have to try it.

thanks

[Cermet]

The hydrostatic pressure you calculated is very minor for a ten millimeter thick glass plate with that area. That glass is as thick as that used on my 75 gal - and my tank hydro-static pressure is way, way greater than your 1 cm thick water colume.