Impact of Exploitation Flaws on Load Capacity of Tempered Glass Stairs Assessed by Numerical Analysis with XFEM

Abstract

Nowadays the structures made of tempered glass are widespread in civil engineering. The most popular are building facades and self-supporting stairs, where the glass is applied to carry the service loadings. In structures such as stairs the exploitation process leads to surface damage. The flaws emerged on the surface cause significant reduction of the structure load capacity. Therefore, it is purposeful to acquire the knowledge about the impact of flaws on glass strength to increase the safety of civil structures. The main aim of this paper is to assess the load capacity of the tempered glass slab with a flaw on the surface which is the major element of stairs made of glass. In order to do this a new numerical model of the one-step stair was built in ABAQUS. The residual stress was calculated by modelling of the quenching process. An initial flaw was introduced to the stair model after the tempering process. The conducted calculations in bending state of considered slab indicated that the flaw 30 × 2 × 0.3 mm in cantilever beam 1000 × 300 × 10 mm could be treated as critical.