Artificial ageing of glass with sand abrasion

•Naturally aged glass was found to be significantly weaker than as-received glass.•Falling abrasive was investigated as an artificial ageing method for glass.•The naturally aged glass was used as a reference for the falling abrasive method.•Existing falling abrasive standards proved unsafe due to overestimation of design strength.•Alternative ageing parameters offer good correlation to naturally aged glass strength.