Analytical solutions for plates connected by edge beams, under various loading conditions: An application for insulating glass units

Insulating Glass Units (IGUs), widely used in windows, building skins and facades, are composed of two or more glass panes, sealed by perimeter spacers entrapping a gas. The interaction between panes and gas is structurally beneficial, because it permits the sharing on the panes of the applied loads. However, the actual role of the spacers in the load sharing, in particular when the IGU is not supported at all sides, is not yet fully explained. Here, this problem is analytically solved by starting from the study of plates with two opposite edges simply supported, and the other two supported by elastic beams. Analytical solutions, obtained by using infinite series approaches, are provided for rectangular plates under uniform/linear/punctual loads, and parametric analyses have been carried out to evaluate the influence of the bending and torsional stiffness of the beams on the plate response. The obtained solutions are then used to evaluate the response of a full IGU, proposing an engineering approach providing practical values for the design. Comparisons with numerical analyses by finite element method, with reference to different IGU geometries and loading conditions, confirm the accuracy of the proposed approach: the mean gap is of the order of 1–2%.