Glass is a material, that is able to resist very high compression stresses and which has special architectural appeal because of its transparency. For this reason, there is a growing trend to extend the use of glass sheets to load carrying elements such as beams, columns and shear panels. Due to their high slenderness and high compression strength, such load carrying elements tend to fail because of instability. The main objective of the research work is the experimental and theoretical study of the fundamental stability problems (column buckling, lateral buckling, plate buckling) for single layer and laminated glass.

Based on stability tests, the load carrying behaviour of simple and laminated glass in the foreseeable dimensions of application was examined and analytic and numeric models were developed. To simulate the buckling behaviour of laminated glass elements, the time and temperature-dependent behaviour of the PVB interlayer was modelled with viscoelastic finite elements.

The main objective of the work is to discuss possible design methods for single layered and laminated glass elements by means of the test results, the developed models and the parametric study.