雅思练习总结（十七）

雅思练习总结（十七）

本文章是雅思练习总结（十七），总结了文章《Flawed Beauty: the problem with toughened glass》，内容包括原文精翻，文章脉络总结，单词扩展学习3个部分

1 文章原文及翻译

Flawed Beauty: the problem with toughened glass

翻译：有缺陷的美：钢化玻璃存在的问题

On 2nd August 1999, a particularly hot day in the town of Cirencester in the UK, a large pane of toughened glass in the roof of a shopping centre at Bishops Walk shattered without warning and fell from its frame. When fragments were analysed by experts at the giant glass manufacturer Pilkington, which had made the pane, they found that minute crystals of nickel sulphide trapped inside the glass had almost certainly caused the failure.

翻译：1999 年 8 月 2 日，炎热的英国塞伦塞斯特镇，毕晓普斯沃克购物中心屋顶的一大块钢化玻璃突然碎裂并从框架上掉落。问题玻璃的制造商是玻璃制造大厂皮尔金顿，皮尔金顿的专家对玻璃碎片进行了分析，发现玻璃内部的微小硫化镍晶体大概率是导致玻璃破裂的原因。

‘The glass industry is aware of the issue,’ says Brian Waldron, chairman of the standards committee at the Glass and Glazing Federation, a British trade association, and standards development officer at Pilkington. But he insists that cases are few and far between. ‘It’s a very rare phenomenon,’ he says.

翻译：英国玻璃与玻璃窗联合会标准委员会主席、皮尔金顿标准开发官布莱恩·沃尔德伦表示：“整个玻璃制造行业都已经意识到了这个问题。”但他坚称，“这是一种非常罕见的现象。”

Others disagree. ‘On average I see about one or two buildings a month suffering from nickel sulphide related failures,’ says Barrie Josie, a consultant engineer involved in the Bishops Walk investigation. Other experts tell of similar experiences. Tony Wilmott of London-based consulting engineers Sandberg, and Simon Armstrong at CladTech Associates in Hampshire both say they know of hundreds of cases. ‘What you hear is only the tip of the iceberg,’ says Trevor Ford, a glass expert at Resolve Engineering in Brisbane, Queensland. He believes the reason is simple: ‘No-one wants bad press.’

翻译：但有人不认可这个结论。参与毕晓普斯沃克购物中心事件调查的顾问工程师 Barrie Josie 表示：“平均每个月我都会看到一两栋建筑因镍硫化物而出现故障。”其他专家也讲述了类似的经历。伦敦咨询工程师 Sandberg 的 Tony Wilmott 和汉普郡 CladTech Associates 的 Simon Armstrong 都表示他们知道数百起此类案例。昆士兰州布里斯班 Resolve Engineering 公司的玻璃专家 Trevor Ford 表示：“大众接触到的事件只是冰山一角。”他认为原因很简单：“这些玻璃制造商可不想看到关于钢化玻璃的负面报道。”

Toughened glass is found everywhere, from cars and bus shelters to the windows, walls and roofs of thousands of buildings around the world. It’s easy to see why. This glass has five times the strength of standard glass, and when it does break it shatters into tiny cubes rather than large, razor-sharp shards. Architects love it because large panels can be bolted together to make transparent walls, and turning it into ceilings and floors is almost as easy.

翻译：钢化玻璃的应用范围极广，从汽车、公交候车亭到世界各地成千上万栋建筑的窗户、墙壁和屋顶。由于钢化玻璃的强度是普通玻璃的五倍，而且破碎时会碎成小块，而不是大而锋利的碎片，它很受建筑师的青睐，此外，因为大块钢化玻璃面板可以用螺栓连接在一起制成透明墙壁，其经常被制成天花板和地板。

It is made by heating a sheet of ordinary glass to about 620℃ to soften it slightly, allowing its structure to expand, and then cooling it rapidly with jets of cold air. This causes the outer layer of the pane to contract and solidify before the interior. When the interior finally solidifies and shrinks, it exerts a pull on the outer layer that leaves it in permanent compression and produces a tensile force inside the glass. As cracks propagate best in materials under tension, the compressive force on the surface must be overcome before the pane will break, making it more resistant to cracking.

翻译：钢化玻璃的制备流程包括：将一块普通玻璃加热到约 620℃ 使其略微变软，并使其结构发生膨胀。然后用冷空气喷射使其快速冷却。这会导致玻璃板的外层先于内部收缩和凝固。当内部最终凝固和收缩时，它会对外层施加拉力，使其处于永久压缩状态，并在玻璃内部产生拉力。由于裂纹在受拉材料中扩展得最快，因此必须克服表面的压缩力，玻璃才会破裂，从而使其强度更高。

The problem starts when glass contains nickel sulphide impurities. Trace amounts of nickel and sulphur are usually present in the raw materials used to make glass, and nickel can also be introduced by fragments of nickel alloys falling into the molten glass. As the glass is heated, these atoms react to form tiny crystals of nickel sulphide. Just a tenth of a gram of nickel in the furnace can create up to 50,000 crystals.

翻译：但是，当玻璃中含有硫化镍杂质时，上述过程就会出现问题了。制造玻璃的原材料中通常含有微量的镍和硫，镍合金碎片落入熔融玻璃中也会引入镍。当玻璃被加热时，这些原子就会发生反应，形成微小的硫化镍晶体。炉中仅十分之一克的镍就能形成多达 50,000 个晶体。

These crystals can exist in two forms: a dense form called the alpha phase, which is stable at high temperatures, and a less dense form called the beta phase, which is stable at room temperatures. The high temperatures used in the toughening process convert all the crystals to the dense, compact alpha form. But the subsequent cooling is so rapid that the crystals don’t have time to change back to the beta phase. This leaves unstable alpha crystals in the glass, primed like a coiled spring, ready to revert to the beta phase without warning.

翻译：这些晶体可以两种形式存在：致密的 α 相，具有高温稳定性；不太致密的 β 相，具有室温稳定性。钢化过程中使用的高温将所有晶体转化为致密紧凑的 α 相。但随后的冷却速度非常快，以至于晶体没有时间变回 β 相。这会使玻璃中留下不稳定的 α 晶体，就像螺旋弹簧一样，随时可能在没有先兆的情况下恢复到 β 相。

When this happens, the crystals expand by up to 4%. And if they are within the central, tensile region of the pane, the stresses this unleashes can shatter the whole sheet. The time that elapses before failure occurs is unpredictable. It could happen just months after manufacture, or decades later, although if the glass is heated - by sunlight, for example - the process is speeded up. Ironically, says Graham Dodd, of consulting engineers Arup in London, the oldest pane of toughened glass known to have failed due to nickel sulphide inclusions was in Pilkington’s glass research building in Lathom, Lancashire. The pane was 27 years old.

翻译：当发生这种情况时，晶体的体积膨胀率高达 4%。如果它们位于玻璃中央的拉伸区域，释放的应力会将整块玻璃挤碎。而玻璃发生这种破裂所需的时间是无法预测的。它可能在制造后几个月或几十年后发生，但如果玻璃被加热（例如通过阳光），这个过程就会加快。伦敦 Arup 工程咨询公司的 Graham Dodd 说，讽刺的是，已知因镍硫化物夹杂而破裂的最古老的钢化玻璃位于兰开夏郡拉瑟姆的皮尔金顿玻璃研究大楼。这块玻璃已有 27 年历史。

Data showing the scale of the nickel sulphide problem is almost impossible to find. The picture is made more complicated by the fact that these crystals occur in batches. So even if, on average, there is only one inclusion in 7 tonnes of glass, if you experience one nickel sulphide failure in your building, that probably means you’ve got a problem in more than one pane. Josie says that in the last decade he has worked on over 15 buildings with the number of failures into double figures.

翻译：通过数据统计找到硫化镍问题规模的数据也是不可能的。由于杂质晶体是成批出现的，情况很是复杂。因此，即使根据数据显示，7 吨玻璃中只有一块是有缺陷的，但如果有建筑物中使用的玻璃出现过一次硫化镍问题碎裂，那么这栋建筑中的多块玻璃可能也都出现了问题。乔西说，在过去十年中，他已经处理过 15 栋以上的建筑物中达到两位数的玻璃故障问题。

One of the worst examples of this is Waterfront Place, which was completed in 1990. Over the following decade the 40-storey Brisbane block suffered a rash of failures. Eighty panes of its toughened glass shattered due to inclusions before experts were finally called in. John Barry, an expert in nickel sulphide contamination at the University of Queensland, analysed every glass pane in the building. Using a studio camera, a photographer went up in a cradle to take photos of every pane. These were scanned under a modified microfiche reader for signs of nickel sulphide crystals. ‘We discovered at least another 120 panes with potentially dangerous inclusions which were then replaced,’ says Barry. ‘It was a very expensive and time-consuming process that took around six months to complete.’ Though the project cost A$1.6 million (nearly ￡700,000), the alternative - re-cladding the entire building - would have cost ten times as much.

翻译：史上最严重的事故是 1990 年竣工的海滨广场。在接下来的十年里，这座 40 层高的布里斯班大楼接连遭遇了一系列事故。在专家最终被请来处理之前，大楼内共有 80 块钢化玻璃因内含物而碎裂。昆士兰大学镍硫化物污染专家约翰·巴里 (John Barry) 分析了大楼内的每一块玻璃。摄影师使用摄影棚相机，坐在支架上拍摄每一块玻璃。这些照片在经过改装的微缩胶片阅读器下扫描，以寻找镍硫化物晶体的迹象。巴里说：“我们发现至少另外 120 块玻璃含有潜在危险的内含物，随后我们对其进行了更换。这是一个非常昂贵且耗时的过程，大约需要六个月才能完成。”尽管该项目耗资 160 万澳元（近 70 万英镑），但要是把所有玻璃都换一批，那么成本将会是这个数字的十倍。

2 文章结构分析

这篇的脉络可总结如下

1. 第一段、第二段是说了一起钢化玻璃碎裂的事故，英国塞伦塞斯特镇，毕晓普斯沃克购物中心屋顶的钢化玻璃吊顶突然碎裂，经过专家分析，成因是其中的微小硫化镍晶体，但专业委员会声称这是小概率事件

2. 第三段啪啪打脸，很多人对调查结果不满，都在说这个事儿其实很常见的，只是被玻璃行业的资本给公关掉了

3. 第四段是说钢化玻璃由于其高强度、高安全的特性，被广泛用于人们的日常生活中，小到汽车、公交候车，达到公共场所的地板、屋顶，如果出现安全问题，后果不堪设想

4. 第五段、第六段和第七段是从专业角度详细解释了硫化镍晶体的成因，钢化玻璃的制备是利用了普通玻璃加热后进行单侧迅速降温时，在表面形成压缩层，外力要先看克服这种表面压缩力，才能作用于其内部，因此大大增强了其强度。但是玻璃中的硫化镍杂质也会在这种过程中发生反应，仅十分之一克的镍就能形成多达 50,000 个晶体，而这些晶体有2种形式，耐高温的致密 α 相，不耐高温的稀疏 β 相，冷却过程会将 α 相转变为 β 相，但由于冷却过程过快，会留下一些不稳定的 α 相晶体，而不稳定的 α 相晶体在转变为 β 相时，会产生 4% 的体积膨胀，如果这些晶体在使用过程中突然发生相变，就会从内部把玻璃挤碎了

5. 第八段、第九段是说，这种问题是不可预测的，它就像没人知道什么时候爆炸的定时炸弹，虽然人们知道被阳光照射会加速这种过程，但是具体问题时间还是无法预测。此外，同批次的问题玻璃规模也是无法预测的，质检机制只能发现问题玻璃的冰山一角，而且问题也是成批次出现，只要有一块出现了问题，那么这一批估计会有很多其他的也出现了问题

6. 第十段是说，最严重的玻璃事故是海滨广场，专家们花费半年检测了所有的玻璃，并针对性替换了所有的问题玻璃，最终，事件的处理花费了近 70 万英镑，但是如果将所有的玻璃都换了，这个数字就会增长到 700 万英镑了

文章整体结构如下