Estimating laminated glass beam strength via stochastic Rigid Body-Spring Model

摘要

A numerical investigation on the load carrying capacity of a laminated glass beam modelled as a material with a random strength distribution is presented. The strength values were distributed randomly within the beam by a Monte Carlo simulation, according to statistical distributions calibrated on experimental results obtained from literature. A preliminary computational analysis based on the weakest link in the chain-model was conducted to study the dependence of the beam estimated limit load on the adopted discretization. Then, after determining the optimal size of the mesh, the elastic-plastic problem has been solved by a Rigid Body-Spring Model (RBSM) discrete approach. Finally, the variability of the load capacity of the structural element is evaluated as a function of the statistics of the strength related to the size of the defects. One thousand simulations were performed to obtain statistically significant quantitative results. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.