T-ELEMENT BASED ON VECTOR FORM INTRINSIC FININTE ELEMENT AND ITS APPLICATION TO TENSILE CABLE-MEMBRANE STRUCTURES

T-element is a special element for tensile cable-membrane structures. It is able to mesh the cable and membrane separately and avoid the serrate boundary by using a T-element. The T-element based on an intrinsic finite element of a vector form is proposed. Based on the infinite lateral rigidity hypothesis of a boundary element, the mass distribution and coordinate interpolation of a middle point are presented. The element internal forces are obtained through virtual reverse movements and distributed to nodes. The calculation program is also presented. The proposed T-element is proved to be effective in the static analysis by a simple example. The T-element is also applied to the cable failure analysis example of the tensile cable-membrane structure of Expo Axis in Shanghai. It is proved to be suitable and effective in the dynamic analysis combined with structural and mechanism behavior. The numerical analysis results have a good agreement with the experimental results.