Glass, Facade & Lightweight Structures

Facade engineering has developed in recent years into an increasingly important, extremely broad and highly interdisciplinary field of the building industry. Within the wide range of research topics related to facade engineering, our group focuses in particular on the structural and design aspects of glass and metal facades. The aim is to develop efficient, safe and sustainable facade components and connections as well as advanced methods for (structural) facade design. To achieve this goal, experimental, analytical and numerical approaches and analysis methods are applied.

The current interests of the group in this research area focus, among other topics, on innovative glass-metal structural elements for transparent facades, on the condition assessment and reuse of flat glass and glazing elements, on the application of additive manufacturing for novel and material-efficient strengthening concepts for steel components, especially in terms of reuse, and on advanced simulation-based structural design methods for facade components and connections.