Glass plays an exceptional role in the modern architecture due to the optical properties and transparency. Structural elements from glass like beams, facades and roofs are relatively frequent in common practice [1]. Although glass has significantly higher compressive strength in comparison with tensile strength, load bearing glass elements are relatively rare. This opens up new opportunities for application of glass in such structures as transparent columns loaded by the axial force. This paper summarizes the experimental results of the tests on glass columns loaded by centric pressure, which were performed in the laboratories of the CTU in Prague, Faculty of Civil Engineering. The first set of experiments was composed of three specimens in a reduced scale 1:2 to verify real behaviour of the specimens with enclosed hollow cross-section. The main goal of the experiment was to determine force at the first breakage and consequently the maximal force at the collapse of this element.
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