Practical glass experiments

For the Structural Glass course for the Master Structural Engineering & Design @ Eindhoven University of Technology we did several practical experiments in the lab to educate the students about glass failure. We compared calculations according to the Dutch glass code to the experimental results. And compared the failure of annealed (AN) glass, laminated AN glass, fully tempered glass (FT) and laminated FT glass. This was done by loading 1m long and 10cm high glass beams until failure. See below for an example of a laminated FT glass beam.

A couple of lessons:

• Be careful with the application of FT glass: it is strong, but when it fails it explodes and (if not laminated) it is completely gone!
• Failure of annealed (AN) glass is hard to predict. According to code approx. 100kg is allowed on the beam. The lowest failure load was 120kg, so a bit over it. But, the highest failure load was 340kg, so way stronger!
• Apply laminated glass in structural applications, but beware of the 'wet blanket' effect in case of laminated FT glass. Think about your supports and/or interlayer in this case.

Thanks to the lab and Swinkels Glas Eindhoven for supplying the glass!