Measuring the effective Young's modulus of structural silicone sealant in moment-resisting glazing joints

Structural silicone sealants are synthetic rubber adhesives used in the construction industry to bond glass and other sheet infill materials to the frames of windows and curtain walls. In this paper, two different algebraic expressions are proposed to describe the way in which the rotational stiffness of the adhesive connection - resistance to moments acting about the axis of the joint - varies with the sealant's cross-sectional dimensions and elastic modulus. Laboratory testing of DC-983, a two-component structural silicone sealant used widely in factory prefabricated glazing applications, has, with some caveats, validated the mathematical models.