FORM-FINDING ANALYSIS OF TENSION MEMBRANE STRUCTURES WITH T-ELEMENT

In this paper, the force-density method is used to analyze the initial shapes of tension membrane structures, in which the boundary is treated with T-element. The static equilibrium equations for the main nodes on the cable boundary and the T-element node in the cable net are obtained and solved. A computer program is accomplished. Some numerical results of a practical example are given and compared with that of EASY code. It is found that the results obtained using the present method are in good agreement with that of EASY.