Design of Glass Elements for Lateral-Torsional Buckling: Review of Existing Approaches

Abstract

Structural glass is being used in increasingly challenging applications by engineers and architects; however, there is currently no universally adopted analytical method for the design of monolithic slender glass elements subject to lateral-torsional buckling. As a result, designers must use guidance from several different sources. In this study, a number of prevalent standards and design guides was examined and design calculations undertaken using the methods proposed. The design results were compared to experimental data from the literature to assess the level of conservatism in each method. A noticeable difference was observed among the investigated approaches with some potentially unsafe estimations of design buckling capacity. Local tensile stresses were investigated, as was global buckling behavior, because these are important considerations when designing brittle glass elements. Finally, a parametric study was undertaken to assess the influence of key variables on the design solutions.