advanced building skins 14 | 15 June 2012 - lamp.tugraz.at - Graz ...

Prof. Dr.nat.techn. Oliver Englhardt
Institute of Building Construction
Graz University of Technology
Copyright © with the authors. All rights reserved.
Summary
Numerical and Experimental Analysis
of Suspended Glass Fins
Vlad Silvestru, Dipl.-Ing.
Graz University of Technology, Austria, silvestru@ihb.tugraz.at
Oliver Englhardt, Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.nat.techn.
Graz University of Technology, Austria, englhardt@ihb.tugraz.at
Transparency is a characteristic, which is often requested for the facades of banks, shopping malls,
office buildings or other public constructions. One possibility to increase the transparency of the
facade is to use glass not only to separate the interior of the building from the exterior, but also as
structural elements in the form of glass fins. In this paper a rectangular and a trapezoidal geometry
for glass fins are analysed and compared. Additionally, grout and thermoplastic blocks are used as
contact materials for both geometries in order to apply the loads into the glass edges. The results of
numerical simulations and experimental tests are discussed and conclusions about which glass fin
type behaves the best are formulated.
Keywords: Transparent Facades, Glass Fins, Structural Glass, Load Application into
Glass Edges, Contact Materials, Grout, Thermoplastics
1 Introduction
The recent developments in the design of transparent building skins involve a maximal reduction of
the ‘visible’ structure. To achieve this purpose architects either plan cable facade systems or use glass
as structural elements. In the second case the glass facade can be designed to bear loads by itself
(Figure 1 left) or glass fins can be used to stiffen the facade (Figure 1 right). For glass fins there are
several standard solutions, but there is still room for optimisation.
Figure 1: Curved glass facade at the MAS (Museum aan de Stroom) in Antwerp, Belgium (left); Glass fins at the
Main Entrance Canopy of the ADNEC Capital Gate in Abu Dhabi (right) [by courtesy of Waagner-Biro]
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