Embedded and point laminated adhesive connections for glass structures: parametric non-linear numerical investigations

The high demand for architectural transparency has drastically increased the use of glass mate-rial also for structural purpose. However, connections between structural glass members repre-sent one of the most critical aspects of glass engineering, due to the fragile behaviour of this ma-terial. In that regard, research activities on a novel typology of metal-to- glass adhesive connections (called laminated connections) are currently on-going at EPFL. In this paper the non-linear numerical investigations on the behaviour of this type of adhesive joints are pre-sented. More specifically the effects of mechanical and geometrical parameters on the response of the laminated connections have been studied by non-linear modelling. The results were ob-tained performing several numerical simulations varying the parameters’ values and monitoring the related effects. Scripts for automatic pre-processing, analysis and post-processing have been developed and used for the calculation, rather than a user interface approach. Strong non-linearity in both strain and stress field distributions have been observed, even in case of simple load condition.