Up to now, fabricating cast glass components of substantial mass and/or thickness involves a lengthy and perplex annealing process. This has limited the use of this glass manufacturing method in the built environment to simple objects up to the size of regular building bricks, which can be annealed within a few hours. For the first time, structural topological optimization (TO) is investigated as an approach to design monolithic loadbearing cast-glass elements of substantial mass and dimensions, with significantly reduced annealing times. The research is two-fold. First, a numerical exploration is performed. The potential of reducing mass while maintaining satisfactory stiffness of a structural component is done through a case-study, in which a cast-glass grid shell node is designed and optimised. To achieve this, several design criteria in respect to glass as a material, casting as the manufacturing process and TO as a design method, are formulated and applied in the optimisation. It is concluded that a TO approach fully suited for three-dimensional glass design is as of yet not available. For this research, strain- or compliance based TO is selected for the optimization of the three-dimensional, cast glass grid shell node; in our case, we consider that a strain based TO allows for a better exploration of the thickness reduction, which, in turn, has a major influence on the annealing time of cast glass. In comparison, in a stress-based optimization, the considerably lower tensile strength of glass would become the main restrain, leaving underutilized the higher compressive strength. Furthermore, it is determined that a single, unchanging and dominant load-case is most suited for TO optimisation. Using ANSYS Workbench, mass reductions of up to 69% compared to an initial, unoptimized geometry are achieved, reducing annealing times by an estimated 90%. Following this, the feasibility of manufacturing the resulting complex-shaped glass components is investigated though physical prototypes. Two manufacturing techniques are explored: lost-wax casting using 3D-printed wax geometries, and kiln-casting using 3D-printed disposable sand moulds. Several glass prototypes were successfully cast and annealed. From this, several conclusions are drawn regarding the applicability and limitations of TO for cast glass components and the potential of alternative manufacturing methods for making such complex-shaped glass components.@en

Cast glass is a promising structural material that has seen increasing use in the build environment over the last year. It offers a great freedom of shape for designers and engineers, beyond the two-dimensional float glass that is still primarily used. Despite this, cast glass in practice has only been used for solid bricks, mimicking traditional ceramic brickwork. Little exploration has been made on the complex shapes that can be achieved in cast glass. One of the largest challenges of cast glass is its slow and meticulous cooling process required after casting, to prevent the occurrence of internal stresses. This costly annealing process is the main limitations for producing large scale cast glass elements in an affordable way. Experience in large scale solid glass mirror castings performed for NASA show that annealing times can be reduced through smart design.
Structural topology optimisation is a design tool for creating light-weight, material efficient elements. Its application has mostly been limited to industrial and aerospace design, though it is slowly being introduced in the built environment as the additive manufacturing required for these geometries becomes more advanced, and affordable. So far, topology optimisation of cast glass design has remained unexplored. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the potential of using topology optimisation as a design tool for complex structural cast-glass elements with a reduced annealing time. For this, a complex-shaped grid shell has been redesigned in glass, using optimised cast glass nodes. The entire fabrication process, from digital design, to physical fabrication using additive manufacturing has been explored.