When curtain walls span multiple floors they need to be anchored at the floor lines. Anchor type #2: Windload Clips and Deadload Clips The F clips which only have 1 anchoring leg and are used at the jambs, while the T clips have both anchoring legs and are used at intermediate verticals.
The legs of the clips slide into the open ends of the vertical mullions. Anchor type #1: F&T Clipsį&T clips are used to anchor the head and sill of a typical curtain wall system. The rest of this article will explain how various curtain wall anchors work. But even though curtain walls don’t bear any load from the building, they still need to be anchored to the structure to support their own dead load and account for factors like thermal expansion and contraction, water diversion, wind load, and seismic forces. For example, they can span multiple floors, handle larger wind loads, permit more natural light into the building, and they can be designed in complex shapes. But the development of structural steel and reinforced concrete made it possible to support building loads with columns (rather than exterior walls), and therefore architects became free to design exterior walls that aren’t load-bearing, using light materials like glass for exterior facades (in other words, curtain walls).Ĭurtain walls can be used in ways that glass storefront facades never could. The first storefront-style display windows therefore had to be embedded in cast iron structures that were able to support the building load. At the time, most buildings were designed with the exterior walls supporting the majority (or all) of the weight of the structure. The use of large glass display windows dates back to the mid-19th century, when manufacturers started to produce large glass panes at relatively low cost. As a result of this added complexity, curtain walls need to be attached to the structure of the building using specially designed anchors.
While curtain walls are definitely more complicated to fabricate and install, they offer several design and structural advantages over storefront facades. Both glass curtain walls and storefront facades can be used to introduce more natural light to the interior of a building.
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