Modeling the slippage between membrane and border cables

Abstract

This paper presents the theoretical formulation and the implementation of a class of finite elements capable of representing the slippage between border cables and membrane sheaths, without distortion of the cable's tangent stiffness. After reviewing the 3-node Aufare's sliding-cable element, new sliding-cable super-element is proposed, which simplifies the mesh generation labor and overcomes some limitations of Aufare's elements to deal with large amounts of relative sliding between cables and membrane, which arises as long as meshes are refined.