Structural Sealant Glazing (SSG) – reinventing the wooden window

To facilitate the manufacturing of wooden windows and to use the structural capabilities of glass, structural sealant glazing (SSG) technology, widely used in other industries such as car manufacturing, has been incorporated into the traditional windows design. Indeed, gluing the glass into the window frame facilitates the windows manufacturing process, which thus helps make windows less expensive and helps wooden windows, which generally are more expensive than plastic or metal windows, to be more cost-competitive. Also, the new system offers additional benefits, such as narrower frame widths or reduced exposure of the wood frame to the elements. However, gluing glass onto other materials, such as wood, is a challenge. The bond of such a connection has to safely withstand stresses from daily operation, from UV exposure, as well as from external forces over the product’s lifetime. Thus, researchers at Bern University of Applied Sciences researched the benefits of using such structural sealant glazing (SGG) technology by reinforcing insulated glass elements with a steel profile that is being glued onto the glass edge, thereby making the glazing a structural element of the windows system. Tests found that such reinforced systems can increase a window's rigidity by as much as 13 times while the deformation due to the temperature difference between the two faces increases from L/540 to L/740 between the most rigid and the least rigid system. These positive results form the basis for further research to create a windows system that is fully functional and easy to manufacture.