There are a limited number of in-plane shear racking tests in the field of glass facades design and the designer is sometimes faced with the lack of knowledge about their actual in-plane behavior. This is particularly important for the glass facades exposed to the seismic load, which imposes story drifts to the main structure and hence to the glass panels which can pose a significant risk to users. The
dissertation presents an innovative composite shear panel composed of laminated timber frame and a double heat strengthened laminated glass, which has the function of taking over of the horizontal loads. The contact between timber frame and glass panel is made adhesiveless which consequently enables sliding of glass panels within timber frame. We conducted six monotonous and six cyclic quasi-static racking tests in the laboratory of the Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, University of Ljubljana.
Full dynamic tests have been also conducted at earthquake institute IZIIS in Skopje for two parallel composite shear panels for different earthquake acceleration records. For detailed analysis and understanding of the behavior of the considered composite shear panels, we carried out a series of complementary experiments to capture the response of laminated glass to bending and compression loads, the development of friction force between timber and glass, load bearing capacity of different joint details and mechanical characteristics of the timber frame. Three different types of composite shear panel specimens are tested for three possible boundary conditions. For the interpretation of the hysteresis response we upgraded software HISPA+, which enables us to evaluate ductility, stiffness degradation and the equivalent viscous damping coefficients. The results are showing robust behavior of tested panels and particularly high energy dissipation level due to the friction between the glass panels and
timber frame. Simplified bilinear model for the displacement response at the top of the composite panel
is introduced which was later used in the analysis of the simplified three stories timber frame model for evaluating of the stabilizing effect on the frame structure. The results are showing that considered composite panels have high potential in sharing of the earthquake imposed load where one must be aware of the fact that further parametric analysis must be done for broader acceptance of this statement.
|
