Mechanical analysis and characterization of IGUs with different silicone sealed spacer connections - Part 2: modelling
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SI: CHALLENGING GLASS
Mechanical analysis and characterization of IGUs with different silicone seaed spacer connections: part 2—modelling Chiara Bedon
· Claudio Amadio
Received: 7 April 2020 / Accepted: 9 June 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Insulated Glass Units (IGUs) typically consist of two glass layers, either monolithic and/or laminated sections, that mechanically interact via an hermetically-sealed air (or gas) cavity, and a series of linear spacer connections along their edges. In this paper, based on the experimental tests for small-scale IGU joints under pure shear and IGU prototypes in bending discussed in “Part I”, a special care is spent for the Finite Element (FE) numerical characterization and analysis of these composite systems, with a focus on the actual mechanical properties and load-bearing mechanism for the involved components. Major advantage is taken from the full 3D solid geometrical description of the connection components and the gas cavity infill. The actual role of both primary and secondary sealant layers is first assessed. Further support is derived from analytical calculations for the connection efficiency assessment, based on the adaptation of simplified formulations of literature. Finally, a calculation example is proposed to assess the magnitude of load sharing phenomena, based on FE numerical and analytical calculations for selected configurations. Keywords Insulated glass units (IGUs) · Spacer connections · Finite element (FE) numerical modelling · Analytical formulations 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 for several advantages, but are still not well known from a pure mechanical point of view. Compared to other glazing systems, a combination of multiple mechanical and thermal aspects should be in fact taken into account for their load-bearing performance assessment. So far, however, only few research studies have been spent for specific mechanical issues of IGUs, see for example Morse and Norville (2016), Bedon and Amadio (2018a, b), McMahon et al. (2018). In this regard, it is generally recognized that Finite Element (FE) numerical models or simplified analytical formulations can both support the detection of optimal design configurations. On the other side, it is also known that several key input parameters should be accurately defined and calibrated, for reliable stress/displacement estimates. This is the case of glass structures in general, but especially of IGUs, due to the presence of linear edge spacer connections and an interposed cavity infill that can react to various ambient variations, thus requiring extensive investigations in support of reliable FE assumptions (Buddenberg et al. 2016). This paper follows and extends the experimental investigation reported in a previous “Part I”, see Bedon and Amadio (2020), and specifically focuses on the m
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