Glass is an extremely brittle material and care should be taken when using it for load-carrying purposes. However, a ductile behavior can be obtained by gluing a steel band to the bottom (tensile) face of a glass beam. The yielding of the steel provides the ductility, similar to what is known for reinforced concrete. Reinforcing glass beams is a relatively new research area, and the main conributions to the area is Bos, et. al. (2004), Louter, et. al. (2005), Nielsen & Olesen (2007) and Ølgaard, et. al. (2009).
The current research at the CSE group is considering predictions of the behaviour and improvement of the design.
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Load deflection curve for at mechanically reinforced glass beam. Using too much steel causes an anchorage failure (Beam2-4), while a very ductile behaviour is observed when using the correct amount of reinforcement (Beam 1).
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A cracked glass beam with too much reinforcement (Anchorage failure).
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A cracked glass beam with the correct amount of reinforcement (normal reinforced).
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A FEM model of the normal-reinforced glass beam.
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References
Bos, F.P., Veer, F.A., Hobbelman, G.J. and Louter, P.C., 2004, Stainless Steel Reinforced and Post-tensioned Glass Beams., ICEM12 - 12th. Int. Conf. on Exp. Mech., Politechnico di Bari, Italy, Aug. 29 - Sept. 2 2004.
Louter, P.C., Belis, J., Bos, F.P., Veer, F.A., Hobbelman, G.J., 2005, Reinforced glass Cantilever Beams., Glass Processing Days, Tampere, Finland, 17-20 June 2005.
Nielsen, J.H., Olesen, J.F., 2007, Mechanically Reinforced Glass Beams. In A. Zingoni (ed.), Recent Developments in Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Computation; Proc. 3rd. intern. Conf., Capetown, 10-12 September 2007. Rotterdam: Millpress.
Ølgaard, A.B., Nielsen, J.H. & Olesen, J.F., 2009, Design of Mechanically Reinforced Glass Beams – Modelling and Experiments, Structural Engineering International 19(2): 130-136.