A research paper co-written by DuPont's Stephen J. Bennison has received the Orr Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The paper, titled Mechanical Response of Cracked Laminate Plants, analyzes the dual roles of interlayer and glass properties regarding the design of glass laminates. The paper is a supplement to the current body of literature on glass fracture and failure investigations. Other authors of the 2002 paper were Dr. Anand Jagota (then with DuPont), Professor Sunil Saigal and Dr. Muralidhar Seshadri (then both of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University).

According to DuPont's announcement, Dr. Bennison and his colleagues provided a framework for ascertaining the failure probability in the glass ply, therefore enabling a more prescient design for laminated glass structures. The information can be used to create a set of fragment patterns that are most likely to occur upon glass fracture. The polymer layer and glass-polymer interfacial bonding can then be designed to meet the residual strength criteria.