Advanced form-finding for cable dome structures

Abstract

A numerical method is presented for form-finding of cable domes. The topology and the types of members are the only information that requires in this form-finding process. Dummy elements are used to transform the cable dome with supports into self-stressed system without supports. The eigenvalue decomposition of the force density matrix and the Singular value decomposition of the equilibrium matrix are performed iteratively to find the feasible sets of nodal coordinates and force densities which satisfy the minimum required rank deficiencies of the force density and equilibrium matrices, respectively. Based on numerical examples it is found that the proposed method is very efficient, robust and versatile in searching self-equilibrium configurations of cable dome structures.