Experimental study on three-layer tempered glass panel on quadrilateral simple bearing under local uniformly distributed load

An experiment was carried out to investigate the mechanical behaviour of three-layer tempered glass panel on quadrilateral simple bearing against local uniformly distributed load. Sixty-four specimens with different thickness of each layer, bearing length and length of loading end were tested at a slow speed 0.1 kN/s of monotonic load. It was found that all specimens failed as an entire unit, which was different from the failure mode of ordinary glass or single layer tempered glass. The bearing capacity and secant stiffness of three-layer tempered glass panel increase with increasing of thickness, bearing length and length of loading end. Among all these factors, thickness of each layer showed the strongest impact on bearing capacity and secant stiffness of tempered glass panel, the influence from bearing length is negligible. A formula is proposed to calculate the bearing capacity of three-layer tempered glass panel on quadrilateral simple bearing under local uniformly distributed load, which shows great rationality and accuracy.