Laminated Toughened Glass for New Dimensions

The new building at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany enthrals with its light, transparent construction, made possible by the use of the new Lamex-x-strong laminated toughened glass.

With the newly developed Lamex-x-strong from Glas Trösch, safety glazings and supporting structures for laminated safety glass can be realised in a significantly leaner and lighter manner.

Presented to professional circles for the first time at the beginning of 2009, Lamex-x-strong exhibits notably more load bearing capacity than conventional LTG of the same thickness. This is a decisive advantage, for example in the application as fall protection.

Light, strong and long lasting

According to Glas Trösch, Lamex-x-strong significantly expands the application possibilities of LTG. Load bearing capacity can be increased by considerably more than 40 percent with the same overall pane thickness. The advantage: the safety glass and its supporting structure can be scaled substantially smaller.

In addition, the product enables the design of more generous spans. There are no more precise data available from the company currently as to exactly which changes in the glass, the interlayer or the interaction of the laminated toughened glass components are responsible for these improvements. What is clear, however, is that Lamex-x-strong enables more cost-effective construction in addition to the design-related advantages.

The fact that all functional elements are subject to lower loads increases their longevity, while lowering energy and material costs in manufacturing — factors that are reflected extremely positively in the evaluation of a building's sustainability. On this account, Glas Trösch has received general technical approval for Lamex-x-strong on the basis of proprietary material research, as well as intensive scientific support on already executed projects.

Advantages in constructive glass applications

With Lamex-x-strong, designers of large-scale glass facades have the possibility to economically and accurately adapt to the various wind loads of each individual partial surface and building side. The new wind load standard, DIN 1055, part 4, reacts to the increasing regularity and strength of storms not only with four regional wind load zones for Germany.

Façades themselves are also now notably more distinctly differentiated according to direction, height and wind flow. "Our Lamex-x-strong allows the precise and highly accurate consideration of the varying wind loads without the need to deploy exaggerated glass thicknesses," confirms Thomas Baumgärtner, Director of Constructive Glazing at Glas Trösch GmbH in Nördlingen, Germany. The same applies to the scale of fall-protective glazings, which can be realised much more compactly in terms of total composition thanks to the increased permissible load ratings of Lamex-x-strong. www.glastroesch.de