Why the curved glass of “The Ice Ribbon” is challenging to make?

The curved glass of  “The Ice Ribbon”

Beijing National Speed Skating Oval, also known as “The Ice Ribbon”. The silver-white curved insulating glass and the interlayer light strip are perfectly combined, just like a circle of ice ribbons. With smooth lines and dynamics, it implies the combination of ice and snow movement and speed.

These 22 circlings, high and low, like dancing ice ribbons, symbolize the graceful trajectory of the skates in a speed skating competition and represent the hosting of the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022.

The curved curtain wall glass of “Ice Ribbon” is ultra-clear laminated insulating glass. It has double silver Low E coated, with 12mm air space, filled with Argon.

As for the 22 Ice Ribbons, the decorative glass is ultra-clear small curved glass with color glaze printing. It has more than 1700 pieces of small radius laminated curved glass. The average length of each ribbon is about 620 meters, and the total length is about 13640 meters.

Why is the curved glass of Ice Ribbons so difficult to manufacture?

The first reason is that the “ice ribbon” is an imitation light strip shape. It doesn’t look like a light strip if it is too large. At the same time, it has to achieve the form of a semicircle, which was rarely manufactured before with such a small curved glass.

And the second difficulty is that the manufacturer must imitate it in the same color and shape as snowflakes on the layer of glass with an ultra-small radius. As a result, the breakage rate is high. Finally, the high-temperature printing on the snowflake pattern will further test the glass’s endurance.

How has the decorative curved glass been made?

This glass manufacturing company is one of our partners and also our competitors. Firstly, they developed a set of special small-radius glass forming equipment. Then, to solve the strength problem, the technical department has refined 27 indicators for testing. Finally, they carried out experimental analysis one by one, challenged the limit ball drop experiment of the bending radius, etc.

After nearly half a year of hard work, They finally produced the first batch of ice ribbon small radius tempered glass. And then, the pattern has been optimized into a snowflake shape in the later stage. Finally, after the expert group had accepted the sample, they completed the production of all 3360 pieces of glass. They delivered all the curved glass on time in the next two months.

We’re happy to see our partners accomplish the glass supply of “Ice Ribbon.” Now, many of China’s glass manufacturing companies cooperate in developing and promoting the high-end development of architectural glass. We exist to provide quality glass solutions – help our customers to create the best architectural possibility.