How to choose the right silicone sealant correctly?

Sealants have been widely used in construction fields such as curtain walls, doors, windows, insulated glass, and interior decoration to play a bonding and sealing role. During the application process, we will be exposed to concepts such as structural adhesives, hollow adhesives, weather-resistant adhesives, and fire-resistant adhesives. Sealants can be roughly divided into the following five categories according to their uses: silicone structural sealants, silicone weather-resistant sealants, ordinary silicone sealants, secondary silicone sealants for insulating glass, and special-purpose silicone sealants.

1. Silicone structural sealant

Usage: Mainly used for the structural bonding of glass and aluminum sub-frames, and also used for the secondary sealing of insulating glass in hidden frame curtain walls.

Features: It can withstand wind load and gravity load, has high requirements on strength and aging resistance, and has certain requirements on elasticity.

2. Silicone weather-resistant sealant

Purpose: Seam sealing function to ensure air tightness, water tightness and other properties.

Features: Need to withstand large changes in joint width, high elasticity (displacement capacity) and aging resistance requirements, low strength requirements, both high and low modulus are available.

3. Ordinary silicone sealant

Usage: Sealing of door and window joints, exterior wall caulking and other locations.

Features: It can withstand changes in joint width, has certain displacement capacity requirements, and has low strength requirements.

4. Secondary silicone sealant for insulating glass

Purpose: Secondary sealing of insulating glass to ensure structural stability of insulating glass.

Features: High modulus, not too soft, some have structural requirements.

5. Special purpose silicone sealant

Purpose: Used for joint sealing with special requirements, such as fire prevention, mildew prevention, etc.

Features: Need to have certain special properties (such as mildew proof, fire proof, etc.).

Silicone sealants for different uses have their own different performance characteristics. In general, they cannot be used interchangeably with each other. For example, using weather-resistant sealant instead of structural sealant, using door and window sealant instead of weather-resistant sealant, etc. Using the wrong sealant may lead to serious quality accidents and safety accidents in the project.

Therefore, sealant should be selected correctly according to different usage characteristics.