Glass sandwich panel

Glass has fascinated architects all over the world for its most characteristic feature, transparency. In addition, glass has a higher compressive strength than that of concrete, wood or even steel. These properties have led to a constantly increasing demand for structural glass components. In such structural applications, the glass elements are dimensioned in such a way that they meet the desired stiffness and strength requirements. Therefore, they are thick and heavy and often need a substantial and visible supporting substructure. Glass sandwich structures are a promising solution for creating fully transparent flat elements with high stiffness and lower weight. Such panels can reduce material consumption, while the need for a supporting substructure is much less. Researchers from the Glass & Transparency Group at TU Delft, the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft developed and tested an innovative, all-glass sandwich panel.

According to them, the prototype they made showed the potential of glass sandwich panels as a relatively lightweight and transparent but at the same time rigid structural component. Similar sandwich panels may also be used as façade elements. And not only transparent glass facades can be made according to this principle, facades with integrated climate control are also on the horizon.

Onderzoekers: Dimitrios Vitalis, Faidra Oikonomopoulou, Frederic A. Veer, Vicente Plaza Gonzalez

Technoledge student team: Liesanne Wieleman, MJ Veenendaal, Joep Nizet, Bram Rooijakkers, Charbel Saleh, Franke de Haan, Anne Bruggen

Collaborators: Lida Barou, Serdar Asut

Much more about the research in Innovative Materials number 1 2018