Curtain wall façade system under lateral actions with regard to limit states

During high wind or earthquake action, high-rise multi-storey buildings respond with relatively large storey drifts. The building envelope, in this case a curtain wall, exposed to this in-plane shear resists the action with its drift capacity. This paper describes tests on two different configurations of a newly developed unitized curtain wall, “Qbiss Air” (QAir), using three different cyclic protocols. The protocols were derived on the basis of the serviceability limit state for regions with moderate to high wind and seismicity. The details and configuration influence the response of the system significantly, so the design of the structure can provide accurate information for the design of such systems.