Experimental Analysis of the Post-Fracture Behaviour of Laminated Glass With Bolted Connections

Ensuring the sufficient residual resistance of glass structures after the failure of one glass ply to the failure of all the glass plies is an integral part of the design of glass structures. This paper presents an experimental study of bolted connections in laminated glass during three stages of a glass specimen: an intact glass specimen, a specimen with one ply of glass broken, and a specimen with both plies of glass broken. The effect of the type of glass was observed. The experiment proved that laminated glass made from thermally-toughened glass with bolted connections in its unfractured state has significantly higher resistance than laminated glass made from annealed glass. In a state of both plies of glass broken, the specimens made from annealed glass showed a higher residual resistance than specimens made from thermally toughened glass. The performance at this stage was also influenced by the temperature and loading speed. The expected strength of the glass was calculated on the basis of numerical models.