As a popular material in buildings, glass is able to take the form of facades, roofs, or other load-bearing elements. Several aspects, however, need harmonized design rules and recommendations in support of professional engineers. Moreover, several accidental loads and extreme actions may variably affect the structural performance of glass elements and structures, and thus require specific methods of analysis to ensure fail-safe design. In most of the cases, major issues derive from the combination of a relatively high slenderness of glass members with a typical tensile brittle behaviour of the material.

This webinar will explore the major mechanical features of load-bearing glass elements under various loading and boundary configurations. The session will be split into 3 parts covering:


Part 1: The first part of the webinar will begin with an introduction to glass. Common applications and examples will be demonstrated before outlining some of the design considerations glass structures need to take into account (degradation, seismic loads, thermal shock etc...)

Part 2: The second part of the webinar will take a look at the dynamic performance of pedestrian glass structures. Using case study of an in service foot bridge, the on-site experiments and results are covered including vibration experiments and comfort analysis, with the aim of producing a design configuration to support dynamic performance.

Part 3: The final part of the webinar will cover lateral torsional buckling in glass structures and the use of LTB restraints. Simplified analytical models to prevent LTB failure will be examined for unrestrained or restrained glass members. The discussion will include calculation examples and quantitative analysis of the effect of restraints.