Engineering Glass Structures

This book provides a comprehensive overview of structural glass design, covering the entire process from material properties to conceptual and structural design, calculation methods, and real-world applications. It presents glass and its related products—such as polymer interlayers, adhesives, coatings, and supporting materials—as structural, load-bearing components in buildings and other engineering domains. Readers will find detailed insights into fracture mechanics, polymer mechanics, experimental methods, numerical analysis, reliability and risk assessment, and forensic engineering. The book presents both practical design information and detailed background information, thereby providing a bridge between research, engineering practice and education.

Material Properties of Glass and Associated Polymers.- Monolithic Glass.- Multilayer Glass.- Mechanical Fundamentals for Glass Engineering.- Strength of Annealed Glass.- Pre-stressed Glass.- Mechanical Connections.- Adhesive Connections.- Glass Design Aspects.- Maintenance and Forensics.

Jan Belis is Full Professor at Ghent University (Belgium). His research focuses on structural applications of glass in buildings.

Johannes Kuntsche is Professor of Structural Analysis and Mechanics at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. His research focuses on laminated glass and polymers in building applications.

Christian Louter is Professor of Structural Design & Building Engineering at TU Delft. His research focuses on safety and sustainability aspects of glass in structures and facades.

Jens Henrik Nielsen is currently a leading FE specialist in COWI A/S. Before that he was a researcher at the Technical University of Denmark for more than 15 years with a focus on the structural use of glass and advanced numerical modeling techniques.

Mauro Overend is Professor of Structural Design & Mechanics at Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), where he founded ReStruct, a multi-disciplinary teaching and research group exploring the sustainable use of glass and other architectural material.

Frank Schneider is Deputy Head of the State Materials Testing Institute Darmstadt (MPA) in the competence field “Glass.” His work focuses on material testing and structural applications of glass.

Jens Schneider is Rector of TU Wien and Professor at the Institute of Structural Mechanics and Design at TU Darmstadt. 

Sebastian Schula is a publicly appointed and sworn expert for glass and a partner at SGS GmbH, an office for façade engineering. His expertise includes structural glazing, structural façade analysis, façade assessment, and quality assurance. He also lectures on glass construction.