SHAPE FINDING ANALYSIS OF HANGING MEMBRANE

Abstract

It is a well known fact that the suspended cable configuration under the natural gravity acceleration resists against the gravity loads only by the axial resultant stresses and it is called catenary. Similarly, the suspended membrane is also widely known to result in the curved surface in which no out-plane stress resultant acts under the gravity loads. In the present paper, the problem of the shape finding of the suspended structure in the gravity field is dealt with as a pure geometrical problem where the variational principle is utilized. The proposed method is expected to be utilized for the shape determination of shells and spacial structures.