About 3 years ago we, the Editors-in-Chief, met and agreed to work for establishing this journal. It has been a rewarding journey so far, not least because of the warm welcome of the journal by you, the international glass community.

The first volume, containing 2 issues, was published in 2016 with great success and the current issue forms the basis of the second volume. One of the key measures for a modern journal is the number of downloads and in the year 2016 we had more than 16,000 downloaded papers—Glass Structures & Engineering definitely has an impact. To us this is a clear indication that the journal has had a very good start and leaves without doubt that both the engineering and scientific glass communities are eager to share and obtain knowledge about research and studies leading to new possibilities and insight in our amazing material, glass.

One of the major concerns when using glass in structural applications is its brittleness. The brittleness of the material itself may lead to potentially dangerous failure mechanisms and debris in case the glass fractures. This is one of the major concerns when e.g. facades are subjected to blast loading. Another challenge due to the brittleness is how to join glass and still keeping a high load resistance. Last, but not least, the brittleness is also the reason for sudden, unheralded failure of load-carrying glass components. Research in methods to create more ductile glass components such as beams and fins are necessary to utilize the many other great properties of glass.

In general, our knowledge about how to utilize glass in load-carrying structures is relatively small compared to other more conventional building materials such as steel and reinforced concrete. The current issue is for sure a next step in the right direction.

In the current issue we have selected five papers which have been double-blind peer-reviewed by international experts. The topics in this issue vary from full scale testing to modelling of microscale phenomena related to glass failure. We have papers discussing the performance of curtain walls under blast loading, investigating novel connections and optimizing ways to reinforce glass beams. This shows the diversity of research issues required for future and innovative engineering with glass.

Editors-in-Chief