In Plane Loaded Glass Panes in Façades, Temperature Loads in Fixed Bonded Glass Panes

The author discusses the use of glass panes as transparent stability elements in vertical façade structures subjected to in-plane loads including temperature loads. In the present façade architecture, glass is normally used non-structural. The only mechanical requirement is to resist transversal loads, which determines the thickness of the glass pane. Thus, glass panes are not used to stabilize the structural system. However, glass panes have excellent in-plane stiffness qualities, and providing appropriate connections between glass and the supporting structure, this in-plane stiffness can possibly attribute to the building’s stability. Temperature loads on the glass avoid making a totally stiff connection between glass and structure, whereas this would be required for the stability aspect. To investigate this problem, this paper presents two conceptual connection designs between glass and structure. For temperature loads, these connections will be studied using the theory of plates. It is shown that a bond line as connection, having a large stiffness directly leads to a uniformly distribution equal to almost the complete temperature load. If the shear stiffness of the bond line is taken into account, a complex stress pattern in the glass pane occurs, even for a geometrical and physical linear approach. Thus, the impact of the temperature loads is significant for all glass panes (plate level) and is independent on façade size and this in contrast with the collaboration of the glass panes and supporting structure to resist laterally mechanical loads (structure level). Research will continue with experiments to verify the theoretical derived results and with the development of finite element models to study the complex stress pattern in the glass pane, dependent on connection type and load case.