Glass facades are widely used in building structures, due to a series of aesthetic, thermal, lightening aspects. Wide transparent surfaces are realized in commercial, residential but also strategic buildings (airports, museums, offices, etc.). From a structural point of view, however, these envelopes represent a critical component for buildings, due to the brittle behaviour and limited tensile resistance of glass, as well as to possible criticalities deriving from connections, detailing, etc., hence requiring specific fail-safe design concepts (Haldimann et al., 2008; Feldmann et al., 2014). The estimation of the vulnerability and actual dynamic behaviour of glazing systems under exceptional loads (seismic events, explosions, fire, natural hazards, see Figs.1a to 1c - including their interaction with the building they belong - is currently an open topic, attracting the attention of several studies (Behr et al., 1995; Zhang et al., 2013; Mackalicka et al., 2016; Behr, 2009; Masters et al., 2010; Bedon and Amadio, 2017a; Larcher et al., 2016). However, further efforts are still required. In this paper, the seismic performance of glass curtain walls is investigated. The feasibility and potential of special mechanical connectors interposed at the interface between a given multi-storey building and the enclosing curtain are numerically investigated in ABAQUS (2017). The final result, as shown, consists in a full 3D assembly in which the facade works as a passive control system for the building, in the form of a distributed Tuned-Mass Damper (TMD), with enhanced global and local structural benefits (Bedon and Amadio, 2017).
