Date

2013

Author

Şengün Doğan, Banu Nur

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Extruded aluminium has become the material of choice for building envelope owing to its lightness, wide range of possibilities for profile design, durability and the eco-friendly attitude. In the light of recent technological developments in metal and glass industries, there has been various new approaches towards aluminum curtain wall systems which are mostly preferred by architects in high-rise buildings. Herein, the panel curtain wall system is determined as innovative and the modern aluminium curtain wall system. Furthermore, in the recent prestigious high-rise buildings, the demand of the architects and the contractors begins to replace the conventional curtain wall system which is constructed via stick construction technique, with panel curtain wall system which is applied to the building in a modular form . The main aim of this study is to investigate why the panel curtain wall system comes to the forefront especially for high-rise buildings. Accordingly, the basic architectural, structural and constructional design principles of unitized aluminium curtain wall systems are defined, analyzed and then the advantages and disadvantages of this system are pointed out from an architectural point of view. In order to evaluate the performance of panel curtain wall system against environmental factors, the facade tests, which are new and still-developing methods in Turkey, are used. The extensive facade tests have been conducted on full-scale specimen under field conditions reproduced in an equipped test chamber by authorized facade testing company and the assessment of this curtain wall performance was provided accordance with related standards. The two story full-size specimen, was 3000 mm to 7600 mm, belongs to one of the prestigious office towers constructed in İstanbul. The facade tests conducted to the specimen include watertightness, air permeability, wind resistance and building movement tests. In this study, the performance criteria of panel curtain wall system were investigated not only against environmental factors but also against human sourced factors. It is expected that this study will provide a guideline for system designers on the future research and development phase and for architects on the selection of curtain wall systems for their buildings due to the conducted test results and other advantages taken throughout this study.

Subject Keywords

Facades., Curtain walls., Architecture, Metal curtain walls., Aluminum, Structural.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12615435/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/22460

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis