Abstract: A special joint named contact joint is designed to allow the continuous cable to slide through, while the friction inside the joint will cause unequal cable force on each side. When prestress is applied, the friction will hinder the flow of the cable force and lead to loss of prestress. Finite particle method (FPM) is applied to the cable sliding analysis considering the frictional effect, which discretes the continuous cable into a set of finite particles connected by the cable element. The force of sliding cable element is derived based on the force transfer coefficient of the contact joint and the original length of the sliding cable. The formulations to calculate the force of the sliding cable element with the friction considered are derived. The criterion is also proposed to determine whether the cable slides. In addition, the contact joint model to calculate the force transfer coefficient is given. To validate the sliding cable element, numerical examples are analyzed by self-coded program. The results demonstrate that the proposed sliding cable element with the friction considered is accurate and rational.