The technological and innovational developments in steel and glass industries has enabled designers to create completely transparent fa&ccedil / ades. Building fa&ccedil / ade articulations designed to attain maximum transparency, have thus been executed with the contribution of elegant steel supporting systems, having heavy load bearing capacities, by minimizing the dimensions of structural systems. The aim of this study was to define, analyze and evaluate the accumulated knowledge on structural glass wall systems in general, with particular emphasis on those that may be denoted as &amp / #8218 / spider&amp / #8482 / glass fitting elements for potential applications, to formulate a design guide for professional designers. Hence, the primary elements of the system / the support structure, glass, glass connection joints and the other secondary elements have been evaluated within the architectural context. In the second part of the study, glass connection fitting elements were examined. Additionally the products developed by the manufacturing firms and commonly used in various projects were evaluated. Thereafter, whole document, data, photos of the spider fittings were combined in a spider fitting selection table, prepared and created by the author, which describes the types of spider fittings in detail. Finally, technical adequacy, experience, level of organization and workmanship within the context of Turkey, to evaluate the level of knowledge, were studied. In this regard, the glass wall facade the Akman Condomunium Business Center-Medicorium building, constructed with local materials and local manufacturing companies, was examined and compared with the Boeing Headquarters building in USA, which was constructed with a similair glass wall facade system.

Transparent glasses embedded with ferroelectric/nonlinear optic crystallites have been in increasing demand as these exhibit promising physical properties. These could be fabricated in large sizes and shapes with high optical homogeneity accompanied by high degree of transparency over a wide range of wavelengths of light. Amongst a variety of glasses that are known, borate-based glasses are of particular interest owing to their greater transparency, good chemical and mechanical stability, low materials cost, and useful electrical and dielectric properties. Keeping the potential multifarious applications of transparent glass-microcrystal composites in view, BaO-0.5Na2O-4.5B2O3, BaO-0.5Li2O-4.5B2O3, SrO-0.5Li2O-4.5B2O3, 3BaO-3TiO2-B2O3 and Li2O-3B2O3 glasses and glass-microcrystal composites were fabricated. These glasses on controlled heat treatment at appropriate temperatures yielded BaNaB9O15, BaLiB9O15, SrLiB9O15, Ba3Ti3B2O12 and LiB3O5 crystalline phases, respectively. Further transparent surface crystallized BaO-0.5Na2O-4.5B2O3 glasses were fabricated using ultrasonic treatment and their thermal properties have been investigated in detail using differential scanning calorimetry. It is observed that these glasses were homogeneously crystallizing on the surfaces after Ultrasonic treatment which can be exploited for planner wave-guide applications. Glass forming ability, thermal stability, glass-transition behavior, crystallization kinetics and viscosity of these glasses were studied extensively using various methods and rationalized by invoking various models. The above glasses have been characterized for their dielectric and electrical relaxation properties (as these properties are related to their electro-optic and non-linear optical properties) over 30- 600oC temperature range and frequencies (100 Hz -10 MHz) that are normally of interest in the applications of these materials. Several interesting features such as high ionic conductivity, marginally low dielectric loss and high dielectric constant behavior along with low thermal coefficient of dielectric constant were observed in these glasses and were rationalized using various models. The combination of these dielectric characteristics suggests that these are potential candidates for electrical energy storage device applications.

Transparent glass-ceramics have been of industrial interest because of their multifarious applications. These are becoming increasingly important because of the flexibility that is associated with this route of fabricating intricate sizes and shapes as per the requirement. A number of glass-ceramics, based on well known ferroelectric crystalline phases (LiNbO3, LaBGeO5, SrBi2Nb2O9, Bi2WO6 etc.) were fabricated and their polar and electro-optic properties were reported. Keeping the potential applications of transparent glass-nano/microcrystal composites in view, attempts were made to fabricate SrBi2B2O7 and CaBi2B2O7 glasses and glass-nano/microcrystal composites. An attempt has been made to employ strontium bismuth borate SrBi2B2O7 (SBBO) as a reactive host glass matrix for growing the nanocrystals of ferroelectric oxides belonging to the Aurivillius family. The in situ nucleation and growth of SrBi2Nb2O9 (SBN) nanocrystals in a reactive SrBi2B2O7-Nb2O5 system and its influence on various physical (dielectric, pyroelectric and optical) properties were investigated. The strategy has been to visualize the formation of nanocrystalline SrBi2Nb2O9 as a result of the simple chemical reaction between glassy SrBi2B2O7 and Nb2O5. Indeed at lower concentrations of Nb2O5 transparent glasses were obtained which upon heat-treatment at appropriate temperatures yielded nanocrystalline SrBi2Nb2O9 phase in a transparent glass matrix. Textured SrBi2Nb2O9 ceramics were obtained by quenching the melts of SrBi2B2O7-Nb2O5 in equimolar ratio and their physical properties were studied. A strong anisotropy in physical properties (which are akin to single crystals) were demonstrated in the textured ceramics.