Thermal assessment of glass façade panels under radiant heating: Experimental and preliminary numerical studies

Nowadays, glass is increasingly being used as a load-bearing material for structural components in buildings and façades. Different structural member solutions (such as panels, beams, columns) and loading conditions were the subjects of several research studies in recent years. Most of them, however, were typically limited to experimental testing and numerical simulations on glass elements and assemblies at room temperature. Thermo-mechanical investigations, inclusive of the temperature-dependent behaviour of visco-elastic interlayers used in laminated glass solutions, as well as the typical thermo-mechanical degradation of glass properties in line with temperature increase, in this regard, are still limited. Such an aspect can be particularly important for adaptive façades, in which the continuous variation of thermal and mechanical boundary conditions should be properly taken into account at all the design stages, as well as during the lifetime of a constructed facility. Given the key role that thermo-mechanical studies of glazing systems can pe use of glass in façades, this paper focuses on Finite Element (FE) numerical modelling of monolithic and laminated glass panels exposed to radiant heating, by taking advantage of past experimental investigations. In the study discussed herein, being representative of some major outcomes of a more extended research project, one-dimensional (1D) FE models are used to reproduce the thermal behaviour of selected glass specimens under radiant heating, as observed in the past experiments. Given the high computational efficiency but very basic assumptions of 1D assemblies, a critical discussion of experimental-to-numerical comparisons is then proposed for a selection of specimens.