An Applicability Evaluation of Hybrid Glass Beam as Structural Member

Generally glass is designed not to bear a long-term loading and a seismic force. However, recently architecture can be made more transparent by using glass with a rib of façade and a member bearing the compression load. In a previous paper［1］ the authors proposed Hybrid Glass Beam (HGB) which is composed of tension members and glass beam. The Displacement and the stress control system of the glass beam using prestressing on a tension member which was arranged in the bottom of the glass beam was verified through small and real scale experiments and numerical analysis. In this paper, a new type of HGB [Model-c] is proposed which is more practical than previous models. The structural behaviour was verified through an experiment on 5m span HGB and numerical analysis. Results indicate (1) the displacement and the stress control system using pre-stressing are effective; (2) HGB doesn’t collapse immediately after the glass failure because the tension member was situated in the bottom of the glass beam; and (3) the failed glass-beam could bear a higher load than the dead load of the glass beam.