Load Resistance of Trapedzoidal Window Glass

Large trapezoidal windows glaze control tower cabs at all US airports. The lites are trapezoidal in shape because, rather than glazing the cabs in a vertical orientation, they lean outward. These windows may consist of annealed monolithic glass, annealed laminated glass, or insulating glass units fabricated with annealed glass lites. This paper presents failure strengths for samples of weathered lites from control towers. It also presents maximum principal tensile stress contours for trapezoidal lites and encompassing rectangular lites of the same thickness and preliminary curves relating lateral uniform load to probability of failure for large trapezoidal window glass lites. The authors prepared these stress contours and curves as an initial step in formulating a design methodology for the US Federal Aviation Administration.

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