Thermal response and resistance optimization of various types of point-supported glass facades

Abstract The extensive application of various types of point-supported glass facades may bring potential thermal breakage risk and impacts on indoor human beings safety. In this work, point-supported glass facades with five various types were tested under thermal loads. The present results showed that installation forms influenced significantly the first breaking time, the location of crack initiation and the final falling out area. It demonstrated that the one-point-supported glass facades had the longest time for the first crack occurrence whereas the glass eventually fell completely out of the frame. However, the six-point-supported glass facades had the shortest first breaking time, but ultimately no glass pieces fell out of the frame. To calculate the temperature variation and stress distribution of glass panel, a thermal-mechanical model was developed. In addition, an optimization simulation was further conducted using the bound optimization by quadratic approximation method to obtain a better thermal resistance performance of glass facade. This work provides significant insights on the effects of various installations upon the thermal response of glass facades and helps to understand the failure mechanism and build safer facades by the structural optimization method.