Thermal stresses on window glasses upon heating

Abstract There are concerns about the fire safety of the glass panes in curtain walled buildings with green or sustainable design. Thermal stresses over the glass panes upon uneven heating in a fire should be investigated and were discussed in this paper. Different temperature fields and different boundary conditions of the window frame were studied. In contrast to those literature works, temperature and thermal load were not taken to be uniformly distributed over the whole glass pane. As thermal stresses built up in the glass depends on the surface temperature, surface temperature profiles have to be known. Correlation expressions on the varying temperature distribution were deduced from reported experimental data. The derived results were applied to predict the positions where cracking is likely to occur in the glass construction during a building fire.