Facetted shell structure of glass

Anne Bagger & Jeppe Jönsson & Henrik Almegaard, BYG-DTU, Technical University of Denmark & Ture Wester, Royal Danish Academy of Arts, School of Architecture

In shell structures, which are appropriately shaped and supported, bending stresses are minimized, and loading is transferred primarily via in plane stresses (membrane stresses). This allows for a better utilization of the capacity of the structural material, since stresses are distributed evenly over the thickness of the structure in stead of concentrated at the surfaces. The stiffness to weight ratio of a shell structure is remarkably good, since the absorption of loads is provided by the overall global shape of the structure, and not a local sectional area. Glass is already widely used for load carrying structural members like fins, beams and columns. The structural use of glass is troubled by a brittle behaviour of the material, and a limited capacity for carrying tension forces. However, these characteristics can be taken into account in the design process in various ways. If the glass is used as the load carrying material in a shell structure, bending can be avoided, and the stress level can be minimized to a remarkably low level. In order to avoid the high production cost of doubly curved glass, facetted glass shell structures are considered. The faceting of a given curved surface can be done in many ways, but if the procedure is subjected to specific constraints, certain advantageous characteristics can be achieved. A plane-based faceting, where all vertices have three adjoining facets, results in a structure which carries load via in-plane stresses distributed in the facets, and the distributed shear along the edges. This corresponds well to glass being the load carrying material, since stress concentrations are avoided.

Full text article [339 KB]

The Authors

Mrs. Anne Bagger Ph.D. student Technical University of Denmark I received my M.Sc. degree in 2001 from Technical University of Denmark (DTU). After this I was in Ramboll (a larger Danish/Nordic consulting company) until I started a Ph.D. study at BYG-DTU (Departm... Read more