Reinforcing glass with glass: Application of transport reinforcement in structural glass beams

Reinforcing glass with glass: Application of transport reinforcement in structural glass beams

Leung, C.C.K.

Vambersky, J.N.J.A. (mentor)
Louter, P.C. (mentor)
Kolstein, M.H. (mentor)
Hendriks, M.A.N. (mentor)

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Design and Construction

2010-03-03

Due to the increasing demand of transparency in buildings, it is no longer unusual to apply transparent elements into the bearing structure. Glass is a strong but very brittle material, which means safety is rather problematic should it break. Safety is an issue that has to be improved before glass can be considered suitable for structural elements. Earlier studies have shown that reinforcing glass beams will provide reasonable residual load-bearing capacity, which could provide this safety. Glass fibre is suitable as reinforcement material when the transparency is regarded as important. In February 2009 at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology, P.C. Louter designed and tested a laminated glass beam with embedded glass fibre rods. The bonding interlayer consisted of SentryGlas foil, developed by DuPont and often applied for lamination in hurricane-resistant windows. The results were promising and the concept showed high potential for further research. The study of this thesis project is focussed on improving the concept of embedding reinforcement in laminated glass beams.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:fa732c2f-8708-450b-8e4c-71fe0222a270

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2010 Leung, C.C.K.