Design of Glass Handrails

Abstract

Glass handrail loading and design in the United States lags behind best practice in other parts of the world.  Improvements are possible for the design load, residual capacity and damage-event loading, each of which could be based on occupancy. Neither static loading nor impactor testing accounts for the dynamic effects of sustained loading to handrails during crowd load events. Alternate configurations for improved robustness at similar size and cost are presented.