Design concept for bolted Glass

Abstract

For the design of load carrying glazing structures the connection technique plays an important role, as e.g. there are significant stress concentrations in the vicinity of holes that are subject to a point-like support of glass panes. If no further constructional means are provided, the stress peaks cannot be redistributed and thus a sudden brittle failure is likely to occur. In particular this concerns bolts in bearings of drilled glass holes as long as no ductile stress distributing interlayers in the clearance between hole bearing and bolt shank is provided. In the article, a simple design formula for glass joints with bolts in bearings is suggested that is based on an analytical approach where the local stress distributions coming on the one hand from the bearing pressure and on the other hand from the net section stress concentrations are superposed, and both for which the solutions according to AIRY’s differential equation are found resp. used further on. By this the relevant stresses in dependence on the acting design force, the hole diameter and the pane thickness can be determined without performing complex and time consuming Finite Element calculations.