Experimental and numerical study of buckling glass beams with 2m span

Glass is earning its place in the slow-changing realm of structural building materials. Glass beams can be a good solution for the structural design of transparent roofs or floors in buildings. Strength and stiffness of this material are characteristics which are dealt with in literature. Glass beams, however, usually have a slender cross section, which makes them vulnerable to the instability phenomenon of lateral torsional buckling. Numerical and experimental tests on small glass beams at the Laboratory for Research on Structural Models have been reported by the authors on previous occasions. This paper deals with experiments on larger beams. Several experimental tests are carried out on single pane glass beams with a span of little more than 2 m, providing data on critical lateral torsional buckling load and coinciding displacements of the beam's geometry. Results are compared to FEM simulations and to theoretical values, derived from classical structural analysis theory.