Enhancement of the buckling strength of glass beams by means of lateral restraints

Abstract

New material applications and transparency are desired by contemporary architects. Its superb transparency and high strength make glass a very suitable building material -in spite of its brittleness- even for primary load bearing structures. Currently we will focus on load bearing glass beams, subjected to different loading types. Since glass beams have a very slender, rectangular cross section, they are sensitive to lateral torsional buckling. Glass beams fail under a critical buckling load at stresses that lie far below the theoretical simple bending strength, due to the complex combination of torsion and out-of-plane bending, which characterises the instability phenomenon. The critical load can be increased considerably by preventing the upper rim from moving out of the beam's plane. Different boundary conditions are examined for different loading types. The load carrying capacity of glass beams can be increased three times and more using relatively simple, cheap lateral restraints.