Kingpenn3:
You said....., “The loading on this system is approx. 20 kips. The system is going in a school gym behind glass curtain walls.” That being the case, you may want to pay some special attention to bldg. drift up at the top, under load, as this relates to the rigidity of any glass and glass curtain wall system. Tie rods allow a fair amount of movement of their upper connection points before they pick up their design load, due to slack take-up, due to geometric and stress/strain length changes and this can have detrimental effects on any rigid cladding system.
