Date

2007

Author

Akdeniz, Verda

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Glass is an inherrently strong and elastic building material that allows the enclosure of spaces to provide both comfort and æsthetic appeal. It is evidently due recognition of these properties that has resulted in the current propensity to use it in ever larger sizes; and then with minimumif not total absenceof visible supporting structure. It is, however, its lack of plastic behavior under stressleading to catastrophic failure without warningthat has been the main drawback preventing its use as a structural material on its own. Ergo, the development of composite configurations with plastic interlayers, commonly known as structural glass. Contemporary working methods for glass have also been able to provide better structural characteristicsparticularly after heat treatments, which reduce its vulnerability to cracking and brittle failure. In com-bination, these methods offer designers the possibility of using glass panels capable of acting as load-carrying structural elements. The aim of this study was to investigate the performance of glass-adhesive-glass composite, or laminated, elements and the use of glass as a structural material in light of their inherent strength properties. Here, an attempt was made to define the be-havior of interlayers in structural glass and to then prepare a selection guide. To this end, it was necessary to first gather information about the materials and design methods used to create glass structures. As the literature notes that such stresses are particularly important to structural glass design due to the inability of the material to flow plastically and to thus relieve high stresses, pertinent simulation techniques (e.g., finite element analysis) were then used to investigate shear transfer between glass panes and interlayers. These simulations allowed determination of stiffness with different types of interlayer for panes of different dimensions and orien-tation in respect to loading conditions. It was the results of these analyses that were finally compiled into the selection guide already noted. It is expected that these results will make a worthwhile contribution to developing glass structure design and its application in practice.

Subject Keywords

Architecture, Structural Engineering, Engineering, Building

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12608878/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/17080

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Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis