ASTM International

Standard Specification for Glass Fiber Strands
 N D578/D578M

Annotation

This specification covers the requirements for continuous fiber and staple fiber glass strands, including single, plied and multiple wound. It also covers textured glass fiber yarns. This specification is intended to assist ultimate users by designating the general nomenclature for the strand products that age generally manufactured in the glass fiber industry.

Glass fibers are produced having various compositions. General applications are identified by means of a letter designation. The letter designation represents a family of glasses that have provided acceptable performance to the end-user in the intended application. For example, the composition limits stated for E-Glass in this specification representing the glass fiber family for general and most electrical applications is designated by the letter E. Military specifications, such as, MIL-R-60346, recognize the composition limits described in this specification as meeting the respective requirements for E-Glass strands used in reinforced plastic structure applications.

Glass fiber strands have a variety of general uses under specific conditions, such as high physical or chemical stress, high moisture, high temperature, or electrical environments. Property requirements under specific conditions are agreed upon between the purchaser and the supplier. Electrical property requirements vary with specific end-use applications. For printed circuit board applications, other requirements may be needed such as the use of Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits (IPC) Specification EG 4412 A for finished fabric woven from E-Glass for printed circuit boards, or Specification MIL-P-13949 for printed wiring boards applicable to glass fabric base.

The values stated in either SI units or inch-pound units are to be regarded separately as standard. The values stated in each system may not be exact equivalents; therefore, each system shall be used independently of the other. Combining values from the two systems may result in non-conformance with the standard.