Rational use of glass in tropical urban climatic conditions

Abstract

Glass is a common material us4ed in buildings,mainly for plenestration purposes.Although the physical properties and performance data ofthe wide variety of glass can be easily obtained from technical literature,their performances under specific environmental conditions are not commonly known.While the technical literature presents performance data under laboratory conditions,the same under ambient conditions are not available .However,the post application performence of glass largely depends on the external environmental conditions.This paper attemplts to understand the plerformance of popularly used variety of glasses under tropical urban climatic conditions of Sri lanka.It presents the findings of an exlperimnet conducted under ambient conditions,using a scaled model of a typical office building.