Impact of glass plates rigidity on load sharing in an aerogel composited glass unit

An aerogel composited glass unit consists of two glass sheets and an interlayer filled with aerogel granules. When it is subjected to a uniformly distributed load, part of the load is transferred to the leeward glass sheet through the interlayer. A numerical analysis method is employed to describe the effect of glass plates rigidity on load sharing of two glass plates and an experimental research is conducted to verify the validity of the numerical method. The experimental results suggested that the assumptions which were employed in the numerical method are valid when the difference of glass sheets rigidity is small, but it becomes inapplicable when the difference of glass sheets rigidity becomes much greater. (paper)