Numerical simulation of local instabilities of membranes reinforced with cables

Numerical algorithm to model large deformations of cable reinforced membrane systems is considered in this paper. A local instability may develop in a membrane lacking compressive, bending and twisting rigidity due to the creation and propagation of uni- or bi- directional wrinkles. In addition, slip of reinforcing cables in such systems may trigger certain additional undesired local effects. These instabilities are preliminarily analyzed and modeled in this work. In the case of wrinkling a concept of cable analogy (Stanuszek 2003) is applied. Combination of this technique with the penalty function method (Aliabadi & Brebbia 1993) is used to model contact effects. In particular a deformation of flat rectangular membrane reinforced with edge cable tucked into specially prepared edge sleeve is simulated in the paper. The numerical model was based on Finite Element discretization. Certain qualitative comparisons with experimental results confirmed the efficiency of proposed technique.