Fire Testing of Structural Glass Beams: Initial Experimental Results

Exploratory fire testing of small-scale structural glass beams is presented in this paper. Three 1m glass beams, loaded in in-plane bending, are spanned over a small-scale fire testing furnace thereby exposing the lower part of the beams to direct fire loading. Annealed, heat-strengthened and fully tempered PVB-laminated glass beams are tested. From the results initial tendencies in the structural response of glass beams under fire loading can be derived. It can be seen that, under the given test conditions, the beams can resist the fire loading for a significant duration of time. However, specific test conditions such as a relatively low in-plane load and a non-exposed top edge of the glass beams may have positively influenced the test results. Additional analysis and testing is therefore foreseen.