STATIC ANALYSIS OF CABLE NETWORKS AND THEIR SUPPORTING STRUCTURES

A nonlinear static analysis method for cable structures, particularly emphasizing cable networks, is presented. Cable strains are measured from the current geometry and compressed cables are analytically disassembled with the construction of the equilibrium equation and the stiffness matrix. Finite rotations of cable intersections, referred to as nodes, and cable elements passing through more than two nodes are included in the formulation. An integrated analysis with a linear finite element method is also presented to account for the elastic deformations of supporting structures for the cable networks. The formulation is programmed for a CRAY2 supercomputer using parallel processing to solve the linear equations. Applications of the method used for mesh antenna development are also presented.