The strength of architectural glass

F.A. Veer, P.C. Louter, F.P. Bos, Faculty of architecture, Delft University of Technology & T. Romein, H. van Ginkel, van Noordenne groep & A.C. Riemslag, Faculty of 3ME, Delft University of Technology

In the last two decades architectural glass has made an enormous leap from a secondary material to a material that combines structural and cladding roles. The structural role is a new and problematic one. In contrast to most other engineering materials the strength of glass is not a material parameter but a parameter dependent on processing quality and damage tot the glass surface. There is also no real agreement on how strong glass is. There is a concept Euronorm for structural glass which has values for the characteristic strength for annealed, heat strengthened, fully tempered and chemically toughened glass. There is however no real agreement on the validity of these values for design of glass beams or columns. To provide an independent set of values it was decided to conduct a statistically significant series of four point bending tests on glass in both lying and standing positions resulting in a set of values for the characteristic strength.

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