Passive curtain walls - Enhancing the multi-hazard performance of buildings

Glass facades are widely used in buildings, due to a multitude of aspects. In most of the cases, wide transparent surfaces are realized in commercial, residential and strategic buildings, including airports, museums, offices, etc., often susceptible to crowd. From a structural point of view, however, under the action of exceptional loads such as human induced / accidental / natural hazards, these facades represent a critical component for buildings, due to the typical brittle behaviour and limited tensile resistance of glass, as well as to the high vulnerability of structural details, etc., hence requiring specific safety levels. In this regard, the prediction of the dynamic behaviour of facades under exceptional loads (including the interaction between a given envelope and the building), or the implementation and optimization of advanced retrofitting tools, represent open topics still requiring extended investigations. Taking advantage of earlier studies, the current research aims to assess the feasibility and potential of special vibration control systems (VCSs) at the interface between a multi-storey building and the enclosing facade, under extreme loading scenarios.