Mechanical analysis and characterization of IGUs with different silicone sealed spacer connections - Part 1: experiments
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SI: CHALLENGING GLASS
Mechanical analysis and characterization of IGUs with different spacers—part 1: experiments Chiara Bedon
· Claudio Amadio
Received: 24 January 2020 / Accepted: 16 May 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Due to several advantages, insulated glass units (IGUs) are largely used in buildings to realize curtain walls, vertical partitions but also roofs or pedestrian systems. The typical IGU consists of two glass layers, either monolithic and/or laminated sections, that can mechanically interact via an hermetically-sealed air (or gas) cavity between them. As known, load sharing phenomena have a crucial effect on the actual mechanical response of a given IGU. Accordingly, simplified analytical methods are available in the literature to account for these load sharing effects. The existing approaches, however, assume that the spacers providing the mechanical connection along the edges of glass panels are infinitely rigid. In this paper, original experimental tests are proposed for IGU specimens characterized by the presence of different types of spacer connections, as obtained from on a selection of configurations of technical interest. The actual mechanical contribution of spacer components is then investigated, giving evidence of major findings from small-scale shear and IGU four-point bending tests. Based on comparative test observations, the edge connection efficiency is then assessed for the investigated configurations. Keywords Insulated glass units (IGUs) · Spacer connections · Load sharing effects · Experimental testing · Edge connection efficiency C. Bedon (B)· C. Amadio Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, Piazzale Europa 1, 34127 Trieste, Italy e-mail: [email protected]
1 Introduction Insulated glass units (IGUs) are largely used in buildings, due to several advantages. From a pure mechanical point of view, the most relevant feature to account in the analysis of composite IGUs is that the actual load bearing performance is strictly related to the effects of combined (shared) loads, including also external (i.e., wind, crowd, maintenance, etc.) and internal (climatic effects due to environmental conditions) design actions requiring dedicated calculation methods. The structural role of linear spacer connections along the edges of glass panels (i.e., Fig. 1a), in this regard, represents a further aspect that still requires investigations. The number of influencing parameters for mechanical assessment purposes increases as far as the glass panels composing the IGU system are obtained via laminated glass (LG) sections, where the presence of a flexible interlayer foil with properties affected by time loading and temperature conditions should be properly taken into account (see for example Morse and Norville 2016; Bedon and Amadio 2018a, b; McMahon et al. 2018). As far as the presence of laminated panels and the mechanical interaction of glass layers (i.e., load sharing effects, see Sect. 2) is preliminary disregarded, the structural analys
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