Glass fins with embedded titanium inserts for the façades of the new Medical School of Montpellier

Abstract

The new Medical School of Montpellier, designed by François Fontès, is enclosed by several façades stiffened by the use of glass fins up to 12.71 m high. The main façade assures the monumentality of the institution with its length of more than 60 m. The façade glass panels, with a maximum size of 3.8 × 2.8 m, are stacked transferring the dead load to the bottom panels through plastic setting blocks. The façade panels are fixed with patch-fittings bolted to titanium inserts embedded in the vertical glass fins. The structural system is designed to resist seismic actions and to accommodate the displacement of the main structure under an earthquake scenario. The stability to lateral buckling and under seismic loads is guaranteed by a system of cables and rods which transmits the in-plane forces to the main structure. The post-breakage behaviour of the multilaminate heat-strengthened glass panels and the design of the façade guarantee the stability even under very aggressive accidental scenarios. The paper contains the main issues about the fabrication of titanium inserts laminated with SentryGlas® interlayer. The verification methodology of the glass fin with embedded titanium connections in terms of strength and stability is described. In particular, non-linear buckling analysis J. Torres (B) · N. Guitart · C. Teixidor Bellapart, Les Preses, Spain e-mail: jtorres@bellapart.com N. Guitart e-mail: nguitart@bellapart.com C. Teixidor e-mail: cteixidor@bellapart.com and stability checks based on Eurocodes are proposed. The numerical analyses were completed with pullout tests of aged specimens in order to determine the resistance of the adhesive connections. Finally, a fullscale glass fin was submitted to a three-point bending test to validate the design including the post-breakage behaviour. A brief description of the construction phase is also included.

Transparency in Structural Glass Systems Via Mechanical, Adhesive, and Laminated Connections ‐ Existing Research and Developments

“…Generally speaking, most of the mentioned design projects with embedded laminated connections have shown over the years increasing complexity in size and geometry, which made them a main reference of glass engineering and architectural details designing. Further recent applications can be found in the structural facade of the ING Direct building in Barcelona (Spain) and in the IKEA store facade, Valladolid (Spain), as well as in refs., where laminated connections have been used to join the glass facade panels to the bracing glass fins. Another application of embedded laminated connections can also be found in London, at the new Tottenham Court Road underground station .…”

All‐glass entrance pavillion for an office building in Madrid

“…Flexural and lateral torsional buckling of the typical fins are prevented thanks to the restriction to the lateral displacement of the outer edge of glass provided by the connections to the cladding panels. These reduce the buckling length of the compression fibre of the fin when the façade is subject to vertical loads and wind pressure, and they still have a small stabilising effect under wind suction as discussed in Torres et al[2].…”

Structural performance of a novel liquid-laminated embedded connection for glass

“…More recently, a novel form of adhesive connection, known as embedded laminated glass connections, has emerged and has made significant improvements in the load-bearing capacity and the aesthetics of structural glass connections. This connection method has been implemented successfully in real-world projects (O'Callaghan 2007(O'Callaghan , 2012Willareth and Meyer 2011;Torres et al 2017).…”

“…The insert is embedded via the standard autoclave lamination process but the heating and cooling of materials with different coefficients of thermal expansion (glass and metallic insert) during the manufacture can lead to undesirable residual stresses (Santarsiero et al 2018) in the region of the embedded insert. These stresses are mitigated by using inserts made of titanium (Torres et al 2017) which has a thermal expansion coefficient similar to that of glass. However, the increased cost of titanium along with the cost of the specialised (i.e.…”