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General Technical Papers
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Written by Raymond Ting
The purposes of providing a curtain wall on a building are to provide the aesthetic character of the building skin and to protect the building interior from the effects of natural phenomena including sunlight exposure, wind, rain, earthquake, and temperature. Various facing materials have been utilized in the curtain wall construction such as glass, stone, aluminum plate, aluminum composite plate, steel plate, and composite foam panel etc.
To complete the exterior building skin, many pieces of facing panels must be joined together and sealed against air and water infiltration. The majority of the curtain wall problems is related to the panel joint design.
Due to the multiple performance functions required for the curtain wall system design, it has been a long struggle in the industry for trying to provide an enduring system to fulfill all performance functions. The curtain wall design work is further complicated by the interactions among the various performance functions, for example, the best solution for a particular performance function may be detrimental to the other performance functions.
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General Technical Papers
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Written by Raymond Ting The following paper was published in the January and February 1997 issues of Metal Architecture and was also published in the proceedings of the '97 International Conference on Building Envelope Systems & Technology (ICBEST). The same paper was published in Chinese in the October 1996 issue of Curtainwall Association Magazine in Taiwan. Arrangements are currently being made for publication in Mainland China. |
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General Technical Papers
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Written by Raymond Ting An article entitled "Mold Lawsuits Have Industry Feeling Vulnerable as Larger Projects Are Eyed" by William Krizan with William Angelo and Janice Tuchman published in the 3/31/03 issue of Engineering News-Record. This article highlighted the significant liability exposure of building contractors and designers.
To complete the exterior building skin, many pieces of facing panels must be joined together and sealed against air and water infiltration. The majority of the curtain wall problems is related to the panel joint design.
The well-known term of "Sick Air Building" is the result of toxic molds growing inside the building and spreading into the interior air through the air conditioning system.
To prevent the problem, it is essential to understand the following two conditions necessary to cause the growing of molds.
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General Technical Papers
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I. INTRODUCTION
In designing a curtain wall system, in addition to the appearance parameter, there are three major performance parameters to be considered as listed below:
1. Watertightness
2. Structural Safety
3. Energy Efficiency
In designing a new building, a building life of at least 40 years is normally considered. Therefore, it is apparent that the above three major performance parameters must be of long-term in nature. The art of devising a valid test method for evaluating a long-term performance parameter is a very complicated and challenging task, especially when one parameter is affected by the other parameter. A few examples are listed below:
1. Structural failure caused by rusting bolts and/or connection clips due to water leakage problem.
2. Significant loss of energy efficiency due to the wetting of insulation caused by water leakage problem.
3. Loss of energy efficiency due to loosening of air seal caused by structural movements.
4. Water leakage due to failure of watertightness system caused by structural movements and thus leading to the chain reactions of Item 1 and/or Item 2 above.
The main objective of conducting a mock-up test is to use the test result for predicting the long-term performance of the curtain wall on the real building. Based on this objective, the purpose of this paper is to discuss and to recommend modifications to the commonly used test methods and procedures in the industry.
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General Technical Papers
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INTRODUCTION
A curtain wall system must be designed for multiple performance functions including aesthetic, thermal insulation, sound insulation, water tightness, tolerance for inter-floor deflection, and structural safety against various loads including thermal, wind, and seismic. The recent trend in the building frame design against seismic force calls for a much larger amount of story drift. This trend causes extreme difficulty for maintaining the various curtain wall functions in the conventional curtain wall design approaches. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the cause and effect of seismic force on the curtain wall performances leading to a new set of design principles and approaches.
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Technical Papers
