THE FINITE PARTICLE METHOD FOR ANALYSING CABLE SLIDING IN CABLE-STRUT STRUCTURES

In some cable-strut structures, the special type of joins are designed to allow the cables to slide through freely. The cable cannot be simplified as a 2-node straight bar with the end fixed by the joins, and a special modification is needed in a traditional finite element method. A new developed algorithm called the finite particle method (FPM) is applied to the cable slide analysis. It models a continuous cable by a set of finite particles, and the motion of each particle follows Newton’s second law. The cable slide behavior is described by the motion of particles. The formulations to calculate the internal forces of the sliding cable element are derived. The criterion for the determination of a relationship between joins and sliding cable elements is also proposed. The results of numerical examples calculated by self-designed program verify the rationality of the sliding cable element used for cable slide situations.