Simplified Window Glass Design Procedure

Abstract

This paper presents a simplified window glass design procedure (SWGDP) as an alternative to the comprehensive window glass design procedure described in ASTM E 1300, “Standard practice for determining the load resistance of glass in buildings.” Although ASTM E 1300 provides a technically robust treatment of the strength of window glass and window glass constructions, architects and engineers will find ASTM E 1300 difficult to use. The SWGDP presented herein uses the same failure prediction methodology to characterize the annealed window glass strength that underlies ASTM E 1300. By reducing the number of basic glass strength charts to one, the voluminous strength adjustment factors in ASTM E 1300 to one simple table, and the computation of window glass lite center deflections to simple graphs requiring no computations to use, the SWGDP achieves simplicity in its approach to window glass design.