Investigate the Thermal Response of Different Installation Forms of Glass Panels Under Fire Loading: A Numerical Approach

Nowadays, non-load bearing walls are mostly used in high rise buildings due to their cost-effectiveness as well as fast installation. But these walls are critical elements that can cause severe damage in buildings during a fire mainly due to the combustible materials. Therefore, selecting materials with strong heat resistant properties is important to reduce fire risks. Glass is often selected material for non-load bearing external walls due to its transparency, affordability, availability, and sustainability. However, glass panels can be vulnerable to damage when exposed to heat loading due to their natural fragility. According to that, the method of installation is a considerable factor when considering their susceptibility to failure. This applies to different types of shading methods and constraining conditions. Therefore, this study is conducted to investigate the thermal response of different installation forms of glass panels under fire loadings using numerical analysis, especially focusing on assessing the thermal behavior of single glass facades subjected to fire loads with different installation configurations through the utilization of ABAQUS finite element software. There are three types of glass facades according to the support condition; point supported, frame supported, and full glass curtain walls. Additionally, glass curtain walls can be further classified into fully exposed, horizontally hidden, vertically hidden, and fully hidden framing according to the method of frame installation. However, limited research has been conducted on the thermal response of frame-supported glass facades under varying shading and constraining conditions. For that, nine cases with different shaded and constraining conditions are modeled. The findings from the analysis indicate that there is a minimal impact on the temperature variation of the glass façade due to the shading and constraint conditions. However, when increasing the number of constraint edges of the glass facade, breaking time increases which is a safe result. This suggests that the edge-constrained glass panes are relatively safer than other glass panels.