Study On Shape-State Of And Temperature Effect On Cable-Membrane Structures

The cable-membrane structure is a kind of novel space structure with membrane tensed by flexible cables or rigid supports to obtain prestress producing stiffness and bearing capacity. This paper studies the form-finding and temperature effect on the cable-membrane structure on the basis of reviewing current research progresses at home and abroad.The cable-membrane structure is a kind of soft tensegrity system. It is necessary to find the structure's initial equilibrium shape meeting boundary condition and prestress distribution. Form-finding is the first and extremely important process in analysis and design of cable-membrane structures. Modified Joint-Equivalence method and Modified Synthetic method are put forward on the basis of present form-finding methods, and are applied to the form-findings of the membrane structure, cable-nets structure and cable-membrane structure. Compared with the analytical solutions and previous form-finding methods, the two methods prove to be more accurate with less computational effort.Temperature effect needs to be taken into account in the common structural design, but little research work about the temperature effect on cable-membrane structures is conducted at home and abroad. The paper studies the temperature effect on the shapes, internal forces, deflections and natural frequency of cable-membrane structures. Numeric examples demonstrate that it is necessary to consider temperature effect in the design of cable-membrane structures.Some constructive conclusions and suggestions are presented from the analysis results.