| This thesis is written to discuss how to choose the right types of glass and dimensions for glass beam design and construction. There is a tendency of structural use of glass recently to achieve maximum transparency on buildings, and glass beam is one of the most popular elements. However, there is only limited information on this new technique and some of the information has not been published to the public, which make it difficult for architects to design and build buildings with glass beams. The primary target of this thesis is to provide an introduction about glass beams to explain how they work, and create tables for size selection. Strength of structural glass is discussed and four primary criteria three structure design, bending, deflection and buckling, are examined. |
