Post-crack capacity of mechanically reinforced glass beams (MRGB)

Glass has been used in the building envelope for centuries; however, an increasing trend towards utilizing it for load-carrying structures is seen over the last couple of decades. Glass has a very high compressive strength compared to traditionally load-carrying materials used in civil engineering. On the other hand, due to the brittleness of glass, the tensile strength is governed by surface flaws and is therefore low and unreliable. In order to obtain a ductile global behavior of structural elements made of glass, steel reinforcement can be used in a way similar to what is seen for concrete. In spite of the obvious differences between glass and concrete, several analogies can be drawn between reinforced glass and reinforced concrete. During the last couple of years research in the reinforcement of float glass beams has been carried out, and a ductile behavior has been demonstrated experimentally. The present work is concerned with deriving and verifying design formulas for such beams and investigating the influence on the behavior for different parameters. The design formulas cover the un-cracked state as well as the cracked state and anchorage failure in the form of de-bonding of the reinforcement. The derived formulas are compared with experimental observations and FEM models in order to demonstrate their validity.