Aluminum Extrusions and Glass

[TORCHMAN]

Gents,

I was asked to look into engineering a system of aluminum extrusions and glass. The idea is that the fellow I am working with will be distributor of an international product here in Canada and this product will need a local stamp. The system is already designed and engineered but I will need to check that if conforms to local codes and with local loads prior to putting a stamp on it.

I will have a call with the manufacturer's engineer some time soon but I want to make sure I know the Canadian standards and understand the basics of how aluminum extrusions and glass work together.

Can anyone point me in the right direction for where to begin engineering this product?

 

[NorthCivil]

Leave it to the specialists is my recommendation.

Check your local associations disciplinary records. A huge proportion of those are to do with glass engineering.

If you do want to go down the road of doing these works, the building code will reference you to the right design standards for the relevant materials.

Do not sign any drawings without an address. signing off on a generic solution is a death sentence (and what a lot of these system floggers are looking for)

 

[TORCHMAN]

Thanks for the tips on what not to do, North Civil.

 

[Luceid]

In the US, we use the Aluminium Design Manual (I believe the latest edition is 2015 or 2018) which is a pretty short document. It comes out pretty similar to steel design for the most part - many of the equations look similar, however they make you check many of the individual cross section parts with more diligence than you would for a typical steel member.