Glass Sculpture at Dr. George Robert Grasett Park

Abstract

The Grasett Park is a glass art sculpture commissioned by the Government of Ireland, to be built in the City of Toronto, to honor the sacrifices made by Dr. George Grasett and his Canadian colleagues to accommodate Irish famine refugees that arrived in Toronto in 1847. The sculpture introduces a series of glass panels positioned like a “house‐of‐cards”, with structural glass panels up to 7 m tall. They generally consist of pair(s) base panels that supports the upper panel(s), all stabilized by rod bracings connected with stainless steel point fixings. Due to the complex geometry and high level of concentrated load, the point fixings are custom designed to allow grout filling within oversized glass holes to minimize additional stress concentration introduced by uneven bearing. Since the localized effects and global effects of stress are not independent, the detailed point fixings are meticulously modelled within a global finite element model. The glass panel is designed based on CGSB 12.20‐M89 and adapts design principles for point fixings introduced in DIN 18008. Typical upper panels are found to be adequate at 3 layers of 10 mm thick fully‐tempered glass, while lower panels are 5 layers of 12 mm. The maximum stress is limited to approximately between 60–80 N/mm2.