GNGTS 2024 - Atti del 42° Convegno Nazionale

Session 2.2 GNGTS 2024 Seismic isolaHon for Glass Curtain Walls N. Cella, C. Bedon University of Trieste, Department of Engineering and Architecture, Trieste, Italy IntroducHon Glass curtain walls (GCWs) are a typical component of modern buildings, providing them a sleek and modern aestheCc. However, glass façades are also a criCcality for buildings, and require special design strategies under extreme design loads like earthquakes. The main reason is the brible behaviour of glass, which makes these composite systems a potenCal hazard for life. Several surveys conducted aper natural earthquakes, as well as extensive laboratory experimental campaigns, highlighted the high vulnerability and suscepCbility of GCWs to major damage following inter-story drips, even in those buildings that have suffered for minimal damage in structural members (Bedon et al., 2017). This damage is generally due to an incompaCbility between the deformaCon of the primary structure and the façade components. As such, there is a major need to develop technological soluCons to opCmise the capability of GCWs to saCsfy these displacement demands caused by seismic acCons. Possible approaches – like the device fabricated by Heonseok et al. (2021) – should be able to offer energy dissipaCon and flexibility to accommodate the seismic shock and demand. In this paper, the in-plane lateral performance of a full-scale case-study glass façade (Aiello et al., 2018) is numerically invesCgated to explore its criCcaliCes and to assess the potenCal and feasibility of a possible isolaCon system inspired by the well-known rubber seismic isolators for structures. The discussion of numerical comparaCve results poses abenCon on the different behaviour of the reference “fixed” façade and the “isolated” façade configuraCons, highlighCng the potenCal benefits in terms of seismic demand reducCon. Case study As a reference for the numerical modelling, the GCW presented in Aiello et al. (2018) was taken in account. The tested façade is a typical sCck system with five mullions and twenty transoms in extruded aluminium (alloy EN-AW 6060, supply type T5). The GCW is 7.80 m high and 5.38 m wide with a constant inter-story height of 3.4 m. The transom to mullion connecCon is made through a U-shaped steel joint fixed to the mullion with two stainless steel screws.