With the advantages of high strength, light weight, no corrosion and high fatigue resistance, carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) cables have the potential to replace steel cables in a broad range of applications. The ideal structures for such cables are highly pre-tensioned cable systems that are loaded orthogonally to their cable axes. This type of high performance structure with CFRP cables, such as CFRP cable roofs and facades, can be built economically with large or small spans. To illustrate this point, after introducing the history of cable structures and their structural behaviours, a cable net facade, which is a typical orthogonally loaded cable structure, is investigated in a case study. The mechanical properties and economic efficiency of the cable nets with CFRP cables with different Young's moduli and different tensile strengths are compared with those of the corresponding steel cable net. The results show that CFRP cables can effectively improve the mechanical and economical performances of orthogonally loaded cable net structures.
