Laminated connections for structural glass components: a full-scale experimental study

The use of glass material for structural components has drastically increased in the last decade. Among others, a laminated connection is a type of adhesive joint that makes use of foil interlayer adhesive to transfer forces between glass and metal parts. In this work, the use of embedded laminated connections is studied as connection between glass beams. In particular, it is experimentally investigated the use of embedded connections laminated to make a moment joint between laminated glass beam segments. The mechanical behaviour of such glass beams with embedded laminated connections is studied under different loading scenario. Tests are performed under monotonic, creep and damage protocol. Different geometry and location of the embedded laminated connections are compared. The results of this work showed that embedded laminated connections represent an efficient means of load transfer between glass beams. It is observed that the choice of an appropriate geometry and location of the embedded connections can provide a substantial enhancement to the mechanical behaviour of the beam. In particular, a redundant and ductile structural behaviour of the moment connection can be achieved. Furthermore, results also showed that beams with embedded laminated connections are able to resist to severe damage scenarios and to sustain the applied load over time, even in the case of breakage of all glass panels.