Glazed Structures

A new butt splicing technique for thick laminated glass beams

Present splicing techniques between structural glass components almost sistematically make use of holes drilled with diamond or water jets.
But it is known that holes weaken the strength of glass components because of the stress concentrations that occur at their borders. Beside that, shear connection performances between laminated sheets drastically decay near the holes so that the mechanical properties of the glass element have a minimum exactly in correspondence of the most critical points.
Alternatively, structural glass elements can be directly spliced together by means of gluing but the connections are not reversible.
To overcome these inconveniences, Maurizio Froli designed a new splicing technology, free from holes and based on gluing but completely reversible.
The new technique was studied and tested at the Laboratory for Testing Materials and Structures of the University of Pisa.