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FROM:
Jaap A.M. Aanhaanen, “The stability of a glass facetted shell structure”, Master’s thesis, Delft University of Technology, 2008.
HISTORY: The idea of the facetted glass shell structure was first put forward by Ture Wester in one of his papers on the behaviour of plate structures: “[...] if a reliable structural joint method, i.e. gluing is available, then eliminate the metal muntins as well, and leave the glass itself to carry and transfer all the forces. Such a plate dome challenges the vision for a dome design with forces distributed so evenly, that it can be made so ‘thin’ that it becomes totally transparent and nearly disappears - a structure as clear as air, only made visible by mirroring the clouds and the sky.” (Wester 1990) Combining flat glass with a plate structure is a very effective way to use the in-plane strength of glass panels in an efficient structural system. In addition, production of flat (or float) glass is very cheap compared to bent glass.
CONCLUSIONS: The most important conclusion that can be drawn from the research is that the structural concept is very promising. Sufficiently high safety factors are found even when introduc- ing large imperfections. However, some aspects still need to be taken into consideration. One might think of the support conditions, different load conditions, etc. Furthermore, a suitable joint needs to be developed. Other interesting conclusions can be drawn from the different investigations. The fact that the normal and shear stiffness of the joint are crucial in the design is very important, as well as the imperfection sensitivity and glass stiffness. No real problems are found even though the influence of some factors is quite large. These aspects will need to be combined in future studies; also with the realistic support and load conditions.
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