Experimental and theoretical analysis of C-FRP reinforced glass beams

Nowadays glass is often used as a structural material to build façade fins, roof girders, stairs, and so on. In these applications, it is required to ensure the safety of the people by increasing strength and robustness of glass elements. Through the use of fibre reinforced polymers (FRP), safe and resistant glass elements can be obtained. Similar to steel rebars in reinforced concrete, FRP pultruded bars can be used to build strengthened glass beams for structural applications. The tensile weakness of glass can be overcome if FRP reinforcing bars are attached to glass in the tense part of beams to carry tensile stresses after first crack opening. In this way, glass beams can have a significant residual strength at the cracking and their ultimate strength increases notably. In this work, the authors present the results of an experimental campaign on some full-scale prototypes of reinforced glass beams, which can be used as façade columns or fins. The beams were tested under four-point bending. The work is enriched by analytical models to explain the observed behaviour.