Structural Glass Beams with Embedded Glass Fibre Reinforcement

Abstract

This paper investigates the possibilities of pultruded glass fibre rods as embedded reinforcement in SentryGlas (SG) laminated glass beams. To do so, a series of pullout tests, to investigate the bond strength of the rods to the laminate, and a series of beam tests, to investigate the post-breakage response of the beams, have been performed. Both test series have been conducted for round E-glass fibre rods and flat S-glass fibre rods. The pull-out tests showed superior pull-out strength of the flat rods, due to their large bond area. Furthermore, the beam tests showed superior post-breakage performance of the beams with the flat rods, due to higher strength and stiffness of the S-glass fibres. Overall, it is concluded that embedding glass fibre reinforcement in a SG-laminated glass beam is a very promising concept.