Demonstration of the Structural Resiliency of Damaged Sentryglas Laminated Heat Strengthened Glass Fins in Full Scale Testing

Fred Veer,Rob Nijsse,Diana De Krom

doi:10.3844/sgamrsp.2021.29.37

Abstract

A unique structural design was made for the glass facade of the Co-Creation Center building in Delft. The roof is completely carried by the glass fins. The fins are laterally stabilized by being included in the triple glazed facade. To certify the safety of the design full scale tests on the fins were done at Delft University of Technology. Due to a transportation accident the fins were damaged at one end. This allowed an additional study into the effect of this pre-test damage on the residual compressive stressed induced by the tempering. It was found that the residual stresses were not significantly affected by the damage. During the compression tests no cracks developed at the damaged ends. A load of 200 kN, more than double the maximum design load did not produce failure in the prototypes. After intentionally seriously damaging all plies of the fins, the fins could still carry the 200 kN load for 30 min without buckling or other failures being noted. Measurement of the residual stress in the outer plies of the fins after damage showed that sufficient residual stress was present in the larger fragments of the prototype to provide enough stability in combination with the Sentryglass laminating foil.

Highlights

Structural glass facades have developed considerably the last decades
There was no failure of the glass fin under loading
The results show that the fin as designed is safe for use in a building such as the Co-Creation Center (CCC) pavilion

Summary

Introduction

In the development of these facades increasing transparency by using more glass and less metal is critical. Part of this development is the use of slender glass fins to provide out of plane stabilization. As these long slender elements are buckling sensitive this requires significant care and attention in the design phase (Silvestru and Englhardt, 2012) give a good description of these problems. A good analysis of this is given by (van de Rotten et al, 2020), discussing the validation of a recent design. A very good overview of the problems is given by (Momeni and Bedon, 2020)

Results

Discussion

Conclusion