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| High-performance functional glazing has a significant impact on the energy efficiency of buildings and their level of usability or life quality. Experts agree that increased demands will lead to improved functionality of the glass products used in facades.
| In modern buildings, glass is increasingly used as a load-carrying material in structural components, such as glass beams. For glass beams especially the edge strength of glass is important.
| Despite the increasing research activity on structural use of glass in the past years, there is still a lack of comprehensive design codes and standards linked to real-life applications on a structural level. However, more and more ambitious buildings and structures are built every year.
| This paper intends to present how applications of structural glass systems have evolved in HDA’s projects since the author’s intial work at La Villette with Peter Rice and RFR.
| The new HQ for the Belarusian Potash Company (BPC) is a staggering example of glazing being deployed to maximise light and colour.
| A series of four-point bending tests were carried out on monolithic and laminated panels in order to evaluate the ultimate tensile stress of the glass considered and the effective level of connection between the glass foils.
| The article presents an overview of research and applications of glass as structural material, cooperating with other materials: steel, timber, glass or carbon fibre composites.
| Differently from traditional structural materials, the structural behaviour of laminated glasses exhibits some anomalies due to the difference in the stressstrain laws of their components: glass is a brittle material, while PVB and SGP are thermoplastic materials with a visco-elastic behaviour.
| Currently modern facade buildings rely on glazed curtain wall systems. These systems include either singular aluminium alloy frame glass curtain walls or frameless glass curtain walls. This is the case of the so called spider fixing systems, which are pointed supported.
| In modern high rise building, fully unitised systems are frequently being used in construction to save time and cost. Most of the unitised system comprises of structural aluminium alloy of grade 6063 T5 or T6, with spandrel panel (shadow box) and vision glass.
| The canopies are a composite construction between both steel and glass, leaving no element without stress or structural function.
| In recent years there have been a number of sensational reports in the media about “glass cancer” and “spontaneous glass fracture”, with stories relating to “glass raining down from highrise buildings”.