Buckling verification of insulated glass units in compression

Because of their appreciable heat and acoustic insulating properties, insulated glass units (IGUs) are largely used in modern buildings to realize energetically efficient curtain walls. The typical insulated glass unit constitutes a multilayered glass combination, obtained by enclosing a hermetically-sealed air space between two or more glass panels. The deformations of the coupled system typically derive from external usual loads (e.g. wind loads) but also from internal loads (climatic loads), which depend on a series of not easily valuable factors (geometry of the element, temperature, pressure or altitude variations). In the practice, additional loading conditions could compromise their integrity, as for example the particular configurations depending on the deformability of the bearing structure or on the restrained thermal expansion. Because of these reasons, in this paper the results of a numerical investigation concerning the behavior of IGUs under many load conditions are presented. In particular, the buckling resistance of IGUs in compression is discussed, by proposing a simple analytical formulation for the estimation of their load carrying capacity.