Structural Bearings In Holes In Glass

Brian Eckersley, James O’Callaghan

Eckersley O’Callaghan Structural Design, 5 Laycock St, London N1 1SN, UK
Jon Corpe and Sheila Bull
PPR&D, London, UK

Keywords

1=structural 2=bearings 3=holes

Abstract Figure 1
Ideogram of nuclei / bond
One of the most fundamental array in ductile & brittle
engineering problems is that of the materials
connection of parts.
The simple problem of loading
a bolt in a hole in glass becomes a
complex analytical issue owing to the
brittle-elastic nature of the material.
Manufacturing and processing methods
in glass limit the size of glass structural
components and so increase the
importance of connecting methods.
The development of structural bolted
connecting methods using bearings in
holes is explored through built projects
around the world by both testing and
analysis. The aim is to present simple
rules for the calculation of bearing loads
in these holes.

Introduction: the development of

structural bearings:
Though glass is such a good model
structural medium that Galileo in the

Safety Glass in Buildings

16th century and Griffith in the 20th
century used it to test hypotheses,
only recently have techniques been
developed to attach 2 pieces of glass
together using connections developed
over the centuries for timber and steel.
Pieces of wood were joined together
with wood pins hammered into holes
distorting both the pin and the hole
to get a perfect fit. The fit between
pin and hole needs to be 0.5% of the
diameter making tolerance difficult
without distortion. This method was
adapted to steel by hammering red-
hot rivets into holes in plates, again to
ensure a perfect fit.
Such hammering destroys glass. This
is due to the different array of nuclei
and bond in wood & metal and glass.
The bond strength is much weaker than
the nuclei. Wood & steel have an array
such that the breaking of the bond
allows the nuclei behind to reinforce the
bond. This spreads out until the pressure
is accommodated, making the material
ductile. In glass, the nuclei line up
allowing the bonds to continually break
concentrating the pressure on the break
until it collapses, making the material
brittle.
Friction bolts apply large loads to
the face of the plates to stop them
sliding against each other, developed
in steelwork, so that bolts could be
Figure 2
RFR, Tokyo & Seoul joints
dropped into oversized holes providing
a degree of tolerance. Friction bolting
was the first to cross over into glass
C1960 primarily to bolt glass mullions to
the sub-structure. Bolt groups, applying
loads to the face of the glass could
carry quite high loads whilst supplying
tolerance, but they are accompanied by
unsightly flitch plates.
This was no real solution for glass
walls. At Parc La Villette C1982, Peter
Rice extended the notion of the friction
joint by chamfering the hole and
clamping the sheet to the background
with a bush bearing to produce a flush
surface (the RFR joint). The RFR joint is
a satisfactory solution for bolting glass
back onto steel frames and armatures,
but its essential asymmetry makes it
difficult to use for bolting glass beams
together. For the structural glass
canopy in Tokyo 1995 Tim Macfarlane
reinstated the symmetry by putting two
RFR joints back to back in one sheet.
The initial tests we conducted on Tim’s
behalf showed that the idea worked
and subsequent testing showed this
joint carried considerable load, it even
sheared a bolt in an early test.
Figure 3
Parc La Villette
During the development of the Tokyo
bearing, the Academic on the team Dr
Jim Morris of City University, pointed
out that the chamfered shoulders were
not necessary to the load-bearing
capacity of the hole. The last tests using
reject flat holes proved his point and
whilst it was too late to incorporate
this finding for Tokyo with it’s 90
bearings, they were just right for the
next project a horizontally cross-beamed
façade in Seoul with 2,000 bearings
on which James O’Callaghan was the
development Engineer for Tim.
These joints would not exist without
the developments in the use of stainless
steel and tempered glass. Rusting mild
steel like ice, requires more volume
than the iron it transforms, creating
uneven pressure points which destroy
the bonds in glass. Replacing it with the
right grade of stainless steel removes
this eventuality. Poor understanding of
the nature of glass which concentrates,
rather than disperses load meant that
the early rather roughly drilled holes left
potential bond failure pressure points.
These were strengthened as a by-
product of tempering sheets of glass.

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Figure 4
Tokyo Forum Canopy
Figure 5
Samsung Building, Seoul
The parameters of a structural
bearing in glass:
Safety Glass in Buildings
The basic resolution of a high load-
bearing joint in glass immediately raised
5 areas of concern: Workmanship,
Safety, Tolerance, Interface and Analysis
Workmanship:
Concurrent with the development in
profiles has been the improvement in
technology for drilling holes in glass.
The RFR joint can be made by using
a single drill head, drilling the hole
from one side with the inevitable
shelling removed by a chamfer bit
from the other face. This is a prey to
workmanship with the holes being
off-centre or out-of-square, but it is
satisfactory for cladding loads.
The increased loads of Tokyo required
larger, more accurately placed holes.
A CNC machine drilled a lead hole
from one side which allowed a set of
specially modified milling heads to dress
the chamfers from both sides at once
ensuring alignment, squareness, fit
and the removal of the shellings. This
technique also applies to large square-
faced holes such as those used on
Seoul.
Latterly, double drills have become
available which (when properly set up)
drill in from both faces at once and so
avoid the problem of shelling, allowing
small holes to be produced such as
470
Figure 6
RFR, Tokyo & double
drilled hole drillings
Figure 7
Glass cabinets
those used on the cantilevering glass
cabinets for the Clerkenwell Green
Association.
However, to date, the level of finish
recommended by research bodies for
the edges of glass sheets has never been
achieved inside the holes. The milling
and drills only go down to fine grit, and
it has proved impossible to economically
get polishing heads into the holes.
Therefore care is required to make sure
that the interface can accommodate the
finished surface of the hole.
Safety:
Regardless of redundancy calculations,
building regulations worldwide generally
require that all structural glass is
laminated, even though it might be
tempered, and this rather complicates
issues. The laminates range from resin
via PVB to SGP. They can transfer loads
in a stable temperature environment
of between 10°C & 20°C. Recently we
have had some interesting results from
SGP shear bearings, but outside this
temperature range they fail, making
them irrelevant in external glass terms.
In the Tokyo bearing there was
residual side-thrust due to the chamfers
and therefore all the bearings had to
be bolted together without inducing
Figure 8
RFR, Tokyo & Apple
bearings
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any additional loads into the glass
via the laminate. This was done by
milling shoulders onto the bearings
to accommodate the laminate so that
all the bushes locked solidly together.
Square holes produce no side thrust,
and can load directly onto the bearings
with the ends of the pins having plates
solely to maintain position, not take
load.
However, as well as edge bearing
on the glass, the face can also be used
to take load but care must be taken
to ensure the interlayer is stiff enough
not to deform under the load. Since it
has nowhere to go, and there is such
a relatively large area, the interlayer
(unless it is resin) is unlikely to deflect
enough to increase the glass stresses,
but it has not been tested, only
developed through use.
Tolerance:
Unlike the engineering industry which
quite happily turns out components at
+0 / -0.1mm tolerances, the GGF will
not reduce their tolerances lower than
±2 even using CNC machines (3 in
Europe). On the RFR joint this is taken
out by a loose fit hole on the backing
plate to which it is anchored. Whilst
this was satisfactory for a single sheet
of glass on the outside, it was not
satisfactory for the high loads of the
Tokyo bearing, and to guarantee perfect
fit at all times (up and down loads),
double cams were introduced between
the bearing and the pin to ensure no
additional pressure was put on the glass
due to the misalignment of the holes.
However, each sheet of glass requires
its own cam, as holes cannot be post-
drilled in tempered glass.
This complication led to the joint
used on the Apple stores in which a
transfer medium takes out tolerance

Figure 9
Apple staircase, Nagoya
as well using a technique recently
developed by Apple, James O’Callaghan
and Seele GmbH for injecting Epoxy
cement between the pin and the hole.
This marks a return to the timber pegs
and hot rivets of the past, but without
using stress to provide the fit, just the
chemical reaction in the Epoxy as it
changes from liquid to solid.
Interface:
Friction bolting always had a high
friction medium between the loading
face and the glass to reduce the
slipperiness of the glass and protect it
from the steel. In the RFR joint, this was
changed to pure aluminium which could
be milled into a cup to isolate the bolt
head from the glass and take load. In
the intervening years, the aluminium
was replaced by Nylon 66, but for Tokyo
it proved to be too rigid to flow into the
lines in the holes produced by the mill
head. Very poor results were achieved
until it was changed to Delrin, and this
flow is achieved equally well with the
correct specification of the injected
Epoxy cement in the Apple joint.
Analysis:
Testing showed that small non-
alignments of bolts either due to
lack of squareness or correct position
could induce large stresses in the glass
reducing the carrying capacity of the
joint. To reduce the number of holes
and therefore the risk of inducing stress,
it was agreed that the design had to be
analysed into pure couples with one pin
at the centre of each end of the couple,
not the bolt groups common to friction
bolting. This has the added advantage
that the pins, being larger, are stiffer
and therefore less likely to bend in the
hole.
The load transfer around the bearing
can be idealised in the following way:
The load is transferred into the pins
over 120º, ie 1/3rd of the hole, making
the loaded part of the circumference
effectively the diameter, which when
multiplied by the thickness of the sheet
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Figure 10
The load ideogram
gives the area on which the load acts.
The load divided by the area gives the
average bearing stress in the hole.
Conversely the load of a hole can be
predicted by the load ideogram. Whilst
D and T are clear, the stress is more
complicated. Glass fails in tension
so the allowable bearing stress is an
approximation of the maximum tensile
stress relative to the applied load.
Holes should be a diameter of the
hole or 1½ thicknesses of the glass
from the edge, 4 times the thickness
at the corner whichever is the greater.
In general holes should be placed with
regard to the observations set out in
Peterson’s Stress Concentration Factors.
Although Griffith had worked out in
the 1930’s that the theoretical tensile
strength of glass is c14,000 N/mm2,
this figure is considerably reduced by
the action of the molecules in the air,
breaking the bonds as it cools and
reducing it’s strength in annealed
flat building glass to C 50 N/mm2.
Tempering improves the strength to
C160 N/mm2. Fire glass, borosilicate
has to be tempered for use and has
the same characteristics as tempered
building glass.
Figure 11
Rule of thumb for glass bearing stress (N/mm2)
A Factor of Safety (FOS) of 3
is applied to these figures for the
allowable stress. The presence of holes
increases the stresses in their vicinity
and so the allowable stresses is modified
using a Stress Concentration Factor
(SCF) from Peterson of 3 to account
for the hole and its surface . These
factors, when applied to the glass failure
strengths, produce the table of the
rule of thumb of 3’s for the allowable
bearing stress in the hole for the
grossed-up short medium and long term
loads. Worldwide codes of practice for
allowable stresses are inconsistent but
the rule of thumb sits at the lower end
of the range with regard to toughened
bearings but annealed bearings may
require an additional factor of safety for
long term loads.
Removal of the Safety Factor gives
the average bearing stress at which the
joint would be expected to fail. This
is the figure used in testing. Very high
strength steels & titaniums are often
required in test pins to ensure that they
do not fail before the glass.
This rule of thumb is for sizing
bearings in a simple elastic analysis
where the actual stress distributions
are not known. These can be refined
by FE analysis and complex designs
should be checked by FE. Care must
be taken to ensure that the modelled
fittings are correctly released, as failure
to do so will induce large stresses in
the model. Of course, even when the
most sophisticated FE is carried out,
the ACTUAL stress distributions are still
not known since one is dealing with a
theoretical representation of reality.
Whilst there is some reticence
to using bearing holes in annealed
glass, modern and improving drilling
techniques which produce good quality
holes should theoretically make bearing
possible and allow standard laminate
sheets to be post-drilled, reducing the
need for tolerance between sheets. A
project for a staircase using annealed
balustrades as well as treads was
designed, but did not come to fruition,
and so the joint has not been tested.
The above design bearing stresses
are only true of a symmetrically loaded
Safety Glass in Buildings
Figure 12
Annealed staircase
pin. If the pin is asymmetrically loaded
such as the RFR joint or the Apple tread
connector, the bearing capacity is a
quarter of the symmetrical pin, ie 4.5 N/
mm2 in tempered glass and the stability
of the bonds on the edge of the hole
becomes a great problem.
For face bearing of a panel such as
the couple used to support the Apple
balustrade (assuming satisfactory
stiffness of the interlayer) the bearing
capacity is equal to the Area of outer
diameter of the washer, minus the Area
471
 Figure 13
Apple balustrade
of the hole, times the allowable stress of
the interlayer.
Summary:
1 Bolted bearings in holes in glass can
be sized on the basis of simple allowable
bearing stresses.
2 It is essential that tolerances are dealt
with using fit rather than force.
3 Bolting rather than gluing will
continue to be the preferred method of
connecting elements together as high
loads can be carried without fear of
“creep” failure.
This is not a scientific paper but a
Safety Glass in Buildings
pragmatic record of the use of glass
472
Figure 14
Galileo’s cantilever drawing
bearings based on empirical information References
garnered in design, testing and building [1] J. E. Gordon: The New Science of Strong
glass structures over the last 10 years. Materials
We are at the dawn of the use of glass [2] Stephen P.Timoshenko: History of the Strength
for self-supporting structures, the first, of Materials
[3] Institute of Structural Engineers: The Structural
the canopy in Tokyo is only 10 years
Use of Glass in Buildings
old. There is a lot of research out there [4] Peterson: Stress Concentration Factors
into carbon fibre brittle structures
for the aero-space and car industries
but it is commercially secret, so the
information on glass is not much better
than Galileo’s drawing of a cantilever. So
this is a plea to industry and academia
to measure, improve techniques,
and maybe invent, but above all
make observations clear, concise and
comprehensible.
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