Effect of Elevated Temperatures on the Resisting Mechanisms of Glass-Glass BIPV Modules

Worldwide, there is an increasing number of applications of Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) components, due to many positive reasons. In addition to green energy purposes, glass itself represents a sustainable and recyclable material, with interesting load-bearing capacity for applications in constructions. However, glass for facades and other building components is known to represent a source of vulnerability. Accordingly, for ordinary structural purposes it is usually designed and verified against stress and deflection demands, which could derive from ordinary and accidental design loads. This paper focuses on the numerical analysis of the mechanical capacity and resisting mechanisms that the thin glass covers and the encapsulants of typical use is BIPVs can offer to the sandwich section, especially under extreme accidents like initial fire events. Their thermo-mechanical response is assessed by considering the temperature, stress and strain evolution in the constituent temperature-dependent materials and focusing—as key performance parameter—on the out-of-plane bending stiffness of the BIPV sandwich section.