How Does a Glass Facade Ensure Overall Seismic Resistance?
Publish Time: 2026-02-11
In modern high-rise and super high-rise buildings, glass facades are not only aesthetic symbols shaping the city skyline but also a crucial component of the building envelope. However, earthquakes, as sudden and destructive natural disasters, pose a severe challenge to the safety of curtain wall systems. If the curtain wall detaches, breaks, or fails entirely during an earthquake, it not only endangers the safety of people inside the building but may also cause secondary damage to pedestrians and surrounding facilities.1. Coordination with the Main Structure: The Curtain Wall is Non-Load-Bearing but Must "Move Along"According to modern building codes, glass facades are non-structural components and do not bear the main load, but they must "move synchronously" with the main structure under seismic action. This means that the curtain wall system must have sufficient displacement adaptability. During the design phase, engineers calculate the inter-story drift angle of the main structure under rare earthquakes based on the seismic fortification intensity of the building's location, ensuring that the curtain wall's supporting frame, connection nodes, and panels can freely expand and contract within this deformation range without cracking or detaching. This "following without constraint" design concept is a prerequisite for seismic safety.2. Flexible Connection System: Releasing Stress and Preventing Rigid FailureTraditional rigid connections are highly susceptible to breakage during earthquakes due to stress concentration. Modern glass facades commonly employ flexible connection structures, such as:Sliding Supports: Allow beams to slide horizontally on the columns, absorbing inter-story shear deformation;Elastic Sealing Joints and Expansion Joints: 8–20mm wide weather-resistant sealant joints filled with foam rods are left between glass panels, providing both waterproofing and compression recovery space;Three-Dimensional Adjustable Mounts: Through elongated holes, spring washers, or rubber vibration damping pads, the curtain wall units have the ability to make slight displacements in the X, Y, and Z directions.These detailed designs act like "joints," allowing the curtain wall to "flexibly adapt" during earthquakes, rather than rigidly resisting, effectively preventing glass from shattering due to compression or stretching.3. High-Performance Glass and Safety Construction: Fall Protection is the Bottom LineEven if the glass breaks, it is essential to prevent falling fragments from injuring people. Therefore, laminated glass is commonly used in curtain walls—two or more panes of glass sandwiching a layer of PVB or SGP film. When an earthquake causes the glass to crack, the film firmly holds the fragments together, maintaining the integrity of the structure and preventing them from falling from a height. In high-intensity earthquake zones, laminated glass is even required for the entire facade. Furthermore, the glass edges are finely ground to reduce micro-cracks; the connecting claws or pressure plate systems have anti-detachment mechanisms to ensure that even with minor structural failure, the panels are reliably restrained.4. Unitized Curtain Walls: Factory Prefabrication Enhances Seismic ConsistencyCompared to traditional component-based curtain walls, unitized glass facades complete the assembly, sealing, and testing of the entire panel and frame in the factory, requiring only hoisting and connection on-site. This significantly reduces errors during high-altitude operations, ensuring high consistency in connection accuracy and deformation capacity for each unit. Simultaneously, the unit panels use a plug-in male-female groove design with built-in EPDM adhesive strips, forming a continuous deformation buffer zone that coordinates the relative displacement of adjacent units during an earthquake, improving the overall system stability.The earthquake resistance of glass facades does not rely on being "rigid and immovable," but rather stems from the engineering wisdom of "overcoming rigidity with flexibility." Through coordinated deformation with the main structure, stress release via flexible joints, fall-prevention safety glass, precision-enhancing factory manufacturing, and a multi-level verification system, modern glass facades, while showcasing transparent aesthetics, also build an invisible yet crucial safety barrier. In today's world where earthquake risks are undeniable, this is not only a manifestation of technological progress but also a solemn commitment to life and urban safety.
