Article
Experimental Study on Single Corner Cold Bending Mechanical
Response of Laminated of PVB Interlayer Tempered Glass
Panes and the Coupling Effect with Load
Xide Zhang
1,2,3,
* , Wei Zhou
1,
* and Mingcai Xu
1,
*
Citation: Zhang, X.; Zhou, W.; Xu, M.
Experimental Study on Single Corner
Cold Bending Mechanical Response
of Laminated of PVB Interlayer
Tempered Glass Panes and the
Coupling Effect with Load. Materials
2021, 14, 6914.
https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14226914
Academic Editors: Arkadiusz Gola,
Izabela Nielsen and Patrik Grznár
Received: 12 September 2021
Accepted: 11 November 2021
Published: 16 November 2021
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Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
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4.0/).
1
College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China
2
Key Laboratory of Engineering Disaster Prevention and Structure Safety of Ministry of Education, Guangxi
University, Nanning 530004, China
3
Guangxi Key Laboratory of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation and Engineering Safety, Guangxi University,
Nanning 530004, China
* Correspondence: zxd-gxu@163.com (X.Z.); 1910391126@st.gxu.edu.cn (W.Z.);
1510391042@st.gxu.edu.cn (M.X.)
Abstract:
The cold bending method is a type of curved glass curtain wall construction method that
has been used in practical engineering for a short time. It has the advantages of simple operation, high
efficiency and low cost. However, the mechanical response and properties of glass panes caused by
cold bending have not been solved effectively. To study the mechanical response and the properties of
cold formed laminated tempered glass panes after applying with a wind load, cold bending and load
tests of 9 laminated tempered glass panes were conducted by the orthogonal experimental design
method. The effects of cold bending curvature, glass pane thickness and interlayer thickness were
considered. In this paper, the response law of cold bending stress to the curvature and the relationship
among the influencing factors were analyzed. The variation process of stress, the deflection of cold-
formed glass panes under uniform load and the characteristics affected by cold-formed stress and
deformation were studied. The results show that the cold bending stress is distributed in a saddle
shape, and the curvature has the greatest influence on the cold bending stress, followed by the
thickness of the glass panes. The influence of the interlayer thickness is small. The maximum stress
appears near the corner of the short side direction adjacent to the cold bending corner. The cold
bending stress increases linearly with increasing cold bending curvature. The cold bending stress
and deformation have little effect on the change process of the later stage load effect.
Keywords:
laminated tempered glass; cold bending; mechanical response; coupling effect; experi-
mental study
1. Introduction
Traditionally, there are two main methods for the construction of curved glass curtain
walls. One of the methods is plane fitting, which divides the whole curved surface into
small plane plate units and synthesizes the required surface effect through splicing between
units. This method is economical, but it has a poor artistic effect. The other is to divide
the curtain wall into regular glass panes and then form it by hot bending according to the
surface shape in the factory. This method has a good construction effect, but the required
process is complex, and the cost is much higher than that of the first method. In particular,
a curtain wall with a complex and extremely irregular curved surface can require each
glass pane to make a hot bending mold alone. The molds made are generally not reusable,
which results in a large increase in the construction cost and difficulty. Therefore, in recent
years, a cold bending method has emerged in the construction of glass curtain walls that
have complex and irregular surfaces [
1
]. The cold bending forming method utilizes the
deformation ability of glass, fixing the glass with support to form a cold bend. During the
Materials 2021, 14, 6914. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14226914 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/materials
