A 6 Metre Long Glass Footbridge for the Ancient Public Slaughterhouse of Pisa

Abstract

This paper illustrates the design process and the load testing of a steel-reinforced laminated glass beam built for a 6 m span glass footbridge. This specific glass footbridge has been designed and tested to join two existing floors of the main room of a refurbished masonry building of the 19th century public slaughterhouse of Pisa. To meet the needs for transparency asked by the Municipality of Pisa the beams, the running surface and the balustrades, were made of laminated glass. The project started with a design of a 5790 mm length beam which has been designed and checked using analytical and numerical modelling. Previously a series of 4-point bending experimental tests had been performed on 6 specimens of 2000 mm steel-reinforced glass beams at the University of Pisa in order to validate the accuracy of both the numerical and the analytical modelling. A final load testing has been done on the footbridge and the results have been compared with the numerical findings.

Keywords

• steel-reinforced glass beam
• structural glass design
• fail safe design
• laminated glass beam
• SG
• PVB