Project Title: Glazing behaviour in a fire environment

Principal Investigator: Prof. Sun Jinhua

Funding Source: European Commission

Project Period: 2007-2010

Abstract:

 A real scale experimental system was built up to research the glazing behaviors. It includes control system, assembly cabin, radiation heating system, exhausting system and data collection system. More than 20 experiments were designed and conducted in a orthogonal method, and the L8(27) level was used here. The results reveal that the glass thickness, edge roughness, and heating rate are very important to the glass first crack. The glass size, and shade area play less important role in glass crack. The gesso filler thickness and heat source location play fewer roles on the glass crack. The temperature difference at the first crack varies from 122.5 °C to 142.6 °C for the different thickness glass. The thermal stress at first crack is calculated and the maximum thermal stress is 90.0MPa, and the minimum value is 54.85MPa with the mean value of 69.13 MPa. Furthermore, the three kinds of crack patterns were summarized and in most cases, the crack patterns are the combined result of the three kinds of cracks. Two typical cases were compared with the experiments, and the first crack temperature differences agree well with the experimental result, which indicate that the code can be used as an economic method to evaluate and investigate glazing behavior under thermal loading.