ABSTRACT

Looking at the current architecture, we may notice various examples of glass load bearing structures such as panels, beams, stairs or even columns. Most of these members are made of laminated safety glass with polymeric interlayer between the individual glass panes. Polymeric interlayer is able to provide the shear coupling of glass panes due to its shear stiffness, but this stiffness is temperature and load duration dependent. Therefore, the exact laminated glass panel analysis becomes difficult. This paper is focused on double laminated heat toughened glass panels in four-point bending tests. Panels are laminated with PVB interlayer and they are loaded in two different loading rates. In particular, normal stress distribution along the critical cross section and maximal vertical deflections depending on the loading rate are highlighted. Further, the comparison of the experimental data with simplified analytical calculation is elaborated. All bending tests were performed at CTU in Prague.